Pitigliano

Interesting facts

The town arms show a silver tower on a hill between two red lions of Siena, each topped by a red rose taken from the Orsini coat of arms.

After the Orsini ceded Pitigliano to the Medici in 1604, the tower in the town arms was for a time ringed with the Medici balls.

After roughly 150 years of on-and-off war, Siena recognised Pitigliano as a county in 1455 in exchange for the town accepting Sienese sovereignty.

The Etruscan rock-cut roads around the town range from less than a metre to over 10 metres deep, with channels and sometimes steps carved into their floors.

Outside the town, high above the Lente valley, a reworked cave known as the Tempietto remains a puzzle: its builders and purpose are unknown.

The Jewish cave bakery was called the forno delle azzime, the oven of unleavened bread, and supplied matzah for Passover.

By 1931 the once-thriving Jewish community had dwindled to about 70 members, after absorbing the congregation of neighbouring Sorano in the late 19th century.

The synagogue of 1598 keeps furnishings from the 17th and 18th centuries and is still used for services from time to time.

The 18th-century landscape painter Francesco Zuccarelli, a founding member of London's Royal Academy, was born in Pitigliano.

Pitigliano gives its name to Bianco di Pitigliano, a white-wine appellation created in 1966 and based mainly on Trebbiano Toscano.

Why it is worth it

Pitigliano seems to grow straight out of the rock. Its houses rise sheer from the edge of a great spur of volcanic tuff, wall upon wall, so that it is hard to tell where the cliff ends and the buildings begin. Gorges cut by the Lente, the Meleta and the Prochio surround the town on three sides, and their walls are riddled with caves carved into the soft stone. Pitigliano, in the south of Tuscany's province of Grosseto, is listed among the Borghi più belli d'Italia, the most beautiful villages of Italy.

People have been digging into this tuff since the late Bronze Age. An Etruscan settlement stood on the spur itself — fragments of its walls survive in the Capisotto quarter — and the surrounding country is crossed by tagliate, ancient trenches cut into the rock, in places over 10 metres deep, which radiate from the foot of the spur and whose purpose (roads, quarries or waterworks) is still debated. Pitigliano first appears in writing in 1061. In 1293 it passed by marriage to the Orsini, who made it the seat of their county and held it for some three centuries against Siena, Orvieto and later the Medici, before it was absorbed into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1604. Their stronghold, the Palazzo Orsini, reached its present form in the 16th century; nearby rise the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, the arches of an aqueduct across the top of the town, and the Porta Sovana, the best preserved of the old gates.

Pitigliano is also known as "Little Jerusalem". For centuries it lay close to the border between the Grand Duchy and the Papal States, and Jews fleeing the Counter-Reformation persecutions in Rome found refuge here. The community built a synagogue in 1598, ran its own matzah bakery in one of the caves, and by the mid-19th century made up about a fifth of the population. Most later moved to larger cities; during the Holocaust, the remaining Jews of the town are reported to have escaped deportation with the help of their Christian neighbours. The synagogue, restored in 1995, is still used for services from time to time. Just outside the centre, above the Lente valley, a small cave reworked by human hands — the so-called Tempietto — remains a mystery whose age and builders are unknown.

Getting there

Pitigliano lies about 80 km south-east of Grosseto and about 43 km north-west of Viterbo; the regional road SR74 Maremmana climbs to it from the coast. The nearest airport is Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi (PEG), about 86 km away in a straight line.

Pitigliano

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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