Gavorrano

On a hilltop at the north-eastern edge of the comune stands Castel di Pietra, which in the thirteenth century belonged to the Pannocchieschi. It is there that tradition places the disappearance of Pia de' Tolomei, first wife of Nello Pannocchieschi: the woman who in the fifth canto of the Purgatorio says «Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma», Siena made me, the Maremma unmade me. The cliff on which the fortress stands has been called the Countess's Leap ever since. Except that in Nello's time there was no Pia in the Tolomei house; scholars think it more likely that she was a Malavolti, married off to a small vassal of the Aldobrandeschi, the lord of Prata, to seal a submission to Siena. The name of the rock comes from the poem, not the poem from the rock.

Gavorrano is named for the first time in a document of 1164, when Frederick I allowed a count of the Alberti to take the fief back; then came the Pannocchieschi, Volterra, Massa Marittima, Siena, and from the middle of the fifteen hundreds the grand duchy. Then centuries of emptying out. In 1898 a man from here, Francesco Alberti, found an important seam of pyrite near the village, and Gavorrano became one of the most important mining centres in Europe: the population grew and new villages were born out of nothing — Bagno, Filare, Grilli, Potassa. In 1960 Scarlino and the coast detached and made a comune of their own. The mines closed in 1981 and people went away. What remains, besides the old workings that are now visited, are the villages on the hills: Caldana, Giuncarico, Ravi. And Giuseppe Bandi was born here, writer, patriot and journalist.