Manciano

On 25 February 1945, on the advice of the National Liberation Committee of Grosseto, the first experiment of free elections in Italy after twenty years of fascism was held at Manciano: the lawyer Leto Morvidi was elected mayor, a man who had already been prefectural commissioner and who would become a member of parliament and a jurist. It was not the first time this village had come before the others: on 12 June 1944 it had been the first town in Tuscany that the Allies entered. In between there had been the Resistance, with partisans killed in action — among them Delio Ricci, gold medal for military valour — and in 1955 the comune was decorated with the war cross for military valour for the sacrifices of its people. The Risorgimento too had passed this way: in 1867, during the Agro Romano campaign led by Garibaldi, the Nicola Guerrazzi column halted at Manciano.

Before all this, Manciano was a hill castle overlooking the valley of the Albegna on one side and the tufa country on the other. The first record is of 1188, in a privilege of Clement III for the church of Sovana; then it passes from the Aldobrandeschi of Santa Fiora to those of Sovana in 1272, from the Comune of Orvieto to the Baschi of Montemerano and, by marriage, to the Orsini of Pitigliano. In 1416 the Sienese took it, built the fortress and strengthened the walls, and in 1455 had to give it back; in 1557 the town was granted to Cosimo de' Medici, and from then on, its military function over, the fortifications were left to go and the place became an agricultural centre. On the arms is a golden lion on a red field, taken from a fifteenth-century seal in which the lion held a hand between its paws; and before that the comune used an emblem with the hand alone. In the hamlet of Montemerano, inside the church of San Giorgio, is kept a mid-fifteenth-century panel called the Madonna della Gattaiola: the name comes from the circular hole cut at the base of the painting, which tradition says was made by a parish priest to let the cats through.