Bastione Garibaldi, Grosseto: visitor guide

The Garibaldi bastion, formerly the bulwark of the Monache, is one of the six bastions of the Grosseto city walls. It stands at the north-western corner of the walls, by Porta Nuova.

What to see

It was built in the second half of the sixteenth century during the rebuilding of the walls by the Medici to a design by Baldassarre Lanci, with works carried out in 1577 under the direction of Simone Genga. To open the site the church of San Benedetto and the outbuildings of the convent of the Santissima Annunziata were pulled down, and for this it took the name of bulwark of the Monache (the nuns). Used as pasture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was demilitarised and turned into a public park after 1833. From 1899 it was called the Cavallotti bastion, after the bust of Felice Cavallotti, now lost, sculpted by the brothers Vincenzo and Ferruccio Pasquali; in 1930 the monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi, by Tito Sarrocchi, which since 1884 had stood on the bulwark of San Francesco, was moved here, and since then the bastion has borne its present name.

At the centre of the bastion, in the early 1930s, the Eden Bar with a dance hall was built, the outcome of a project recovered and modified from that, left without result, for an open-air cinema with a skating rink proposed by the surveyor Sergio Manescalchi. The structure was enlarged in 1940 and, between 1961 and 1964, substantially altered at the wish of the entrepreneur Lionello Montefiori. Like all the other bastions it is polygonal with a battered base continuous with the curtain wall above, but it is the only one without gun ports.

Visiting

The bastion is by Porta Nuova. After the demolition of the gate, the pedestrian walk along the walls descends from the eastern side of the bulwark, crosses corso Carducci at street level and climbs back towards the nearby Rimembranza bastion. The sources consulted give no opening hours or possible access restrictions: check with the Comune.