Pitigliano

By the curve by the Madonna delle Grazie area, where stands a church built as a votive offering to the plague of 1527, you can admire a beautiful scenary together with the latest road turns to reach Pitigliano and the beautiful arches of the Orsini acqueduct and the road leading to Sovana.

The scene is astonishing: Pitigliano looks like a place coming straight from the earth, all made by tuff, raising from immense brown boulders surrounded on three sides by deep ravines.

The name Pitigliano derives, presumably, from the gens Petilia, which owned the ground part of the roman territories, and gathered the locals on the tuff hills. Nearby Pitigliano have been found many evidences of its ancient history, including groups of Etruscan tombs, both "cassone" and "camera" structured.

Similarly to other towns of Etruscan origin, Pitigliano stretches on a flat tuff rock where houses rise, narrow and high, from the edge of the ravines that surround it on three sides and at whose feet flows, gurgling, the streams Lente, the Prochio and Meleta. From the round-arched short stretch of wall by the north-western side (known as "Porta di Sotto") to the whole ancient centre of the town an air of mystery surrounds the town.

The village entrance is very picturesque: the road is carved into tuff until the main square where an ancient double door, surrounded by ramparts, opens the way to the only access to the citadel. Passing through the door you will reach Piazza Garibaldi, which overlooks the Town Hall and the Salvini Theatre. The arches of the Orsini (dated 1545) stand tall on the left, later on Piazza della Repubblica, offering two superb views, a side to the sea and the city of Manciano, the other to the road to Sorano.

The main square view is dominated by Pitigliano Bishop's curia house: Palazzo Orsini (built on the fourteenth century and modified over the years up the sixteenth century). The building limits one side of the square and leans against the castle keep with three arches built on the ancient moat that separated at one time the castle from the citadel. Inside the building, after an inclined ramp adorned by a leonine headed bear rampart, opens a courtyard with a porch partially enclosed by an external staircase leading to the premises formerly connected to Keep.

On the left side of the courtyard is located a beautiful hexagonal shaft, flanked by two columns with capitals and travertine architrave. Along the access ramp to the building, built around the structure of an old mill, was recently obtained the chapel of Gethsemane.

From Piazza della Repubblica, there are three almost parallel ways. The main one, via Roma, goes through the medieval town till the square named after the pope Gregory VIIth (born in the nearby Sovana) on which the Cathedral entitled to Sts. Peter and Paul stands (being restored back in the fifteenth century, underwent renovations until 1970). On the left side of the church stands the bell tower (35 meters tall), of particular architectural conformation. Opposite the cathedral is the cornerstone dated 1490, surmounted by a bear, which tells in Latin couplets, the legend of the roses placed in the Orsini coat of arms.

Down the Via Generale Orsini, in the western part of town, is the trapezoidal planted Church of St. Mary (St. Rocco) symbol of the district "Capisotto". After visiting the medieval part of the town you should return to Gregory VIIth square and go down the staircase that brings you to the synagogue which stands in the center of the ancient "ghetto". The Jewish temple was built in the sixteenth century as a worship place for the local Jewish community and was repeatedly subjected to restoration. Nearby is the typical bakery from which the Jews baked unleavened bread.

At the conclusion of the tour of the ghetto, the Jewish cemetery site is worth visiting. You can easily spot it just outside the town by one of the curves of the SS 74 road, towards Manciano.