Seggiano

Here the olive climbs where it usually does not reach: the olivastra seggianese is grown almost up into the mountains, because the slope faces the right way, and it yields a protected-origin oil that carries the village's name. The settlement was born in the early tenth century as a possession of the abbey of San Salvatore on Monte Amiata, and the walls date from then: they still enclose it entirely, and you enter through three gates, San Gervasio, degli Azzolini and del Mercato.

The coat of arms is red, with a holm oak in the middle, and the comune has always used it although it never had it formally granted by decree. Just outside the built-up area stands the convent of the Colombaio, the first monastery the Franciscans founded in the whole province of Grosseto; and a little further on, in the same hills, the Giardino di Daniel Spoerri, a park-museum where the Swiss artist has set his own sculptures and those of others out in the open country.