Coming up from the sea, along the Maremma road, you see the houses jutting out of a great spur of sheer tufa: the rock of Pitigliano is surrounded on three sides by as many ravines, full of caves dug in the stone. The Etruscans were here as early as the late Bronze Age, and where the town now stands there was a centre of theirs, of which pieces of wall remain in the Capisotto quarter: it vanished between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century before Christ. The first written mention of Pitigliano is of 1061, in a bull of pope Nicholas II, and it already assigns the place to the Aldobrandeschi. In 1293 Anastasia, daughter of countess Margherita Aldobrandeschi, married Romano Orsini and brought the county of Sovana as her dowry, and the seat of the county was moved here: the Orsini held Pitigliano for nearly four hundred years, defending it from Siena, from Orvieto and then from Medici Florence. In 1574 Niccolò IV Orsini gave up the fortress to the Medici, and in 1604 count Gian Antonio ceded the town to the grand duchy to pay his debts.
The coat of arms tells these changes better than any chronicle: there is a tower, which is the Orsini castle; after 1604 the Medici balls were set around it; later the balls were removed and in their place appeared two red lions, which are the symbol of Siena, each surmounted by a rose, which belongs instead to the Orsini. The old centre, though, is known for another reason: they call it the little Jerusalem, for the Jewish community that has lived here for centuries, well integrated into the town. The Jews came here in the sixteenth century, fleeing the persecutions and the expulsion, and found a place where they could stay; the synagogue and the quarter of that Sephardi community have been restored and can be visited. At the end of the nineteenth century, when emigration emptied nearby Sorano, its congregation too joined this one. The cathedral of Santi Pietro e Paolo, medieval and then remade, has a late baroque front and a bell tower which above the plaster still shows the tufa of the Middle Ages.
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📅 Every year, on 16 August; the Torciata di San Giuseppe on 19 March
Pitigliano celebrates Saint Roch on 16 August, in the church dedicated to him together with Saint Mary. On 19 March, the traditional Torciata di San Giuseppe is held, to celebrate the arrival of spring.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Pitigliano, but an easy day trip away.
