Pitigliano, Sorano & Sovana
- Mike
- May 24
- 5 min read
In the south-eastern part of the Maremma, close to the border with Lazio and not far from Lago di Bolsena, are three remote Tuscan towns that can all be comfortably seen in a day as you make your way to Orvieto from the coast or vice versa. This is the empty wilderness area of Tuscany so you’ll need to make a bit of an effort to get here which is why we have included it as an excursion on our Secret Places of Tuscany Tour .
A quiet place even in late August
With Sorano and Sovana being little more than villages, Pitigliano is the biggest of these three towns and presents a very impressive sight as you approach from Manciano to the west. In fact as you round the last sharp bend on strada regionale 74 you suddenly get a fantastic view of Pitigliano high up on the other side of the valley and there’s a place to pull over to take the classic photograph that is at the top of this article.
The town is built on top of a ridge of volcanic ash sandstone known as ‘tuff’ and has more than a passing resemblance to the calcareous sedimentary rock of the sassi in the much more famous town of Matera in Basilicata.
For hundreds of years Pitigliano was situated on the border between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States and for this reason it became home to a significant Jewish community who were escaping the discrimination and persecution of the Catholic Church’s counter reformation during the 16th century. The history of ‘little Jerusalem’, as it became known, can be seen today on a fascinating tour through the old Jewish quarter with its many caves dug out of the soft tuff.
In 1938, when the first racial laws were enacted under fascism, the Jewish population of Pitigliano numbered about 70 and then declined to less than half of that by the time war was declared. Those who remained in the town during these difficult times were helped and eventually saved by Pitigliano's Catholic families who hid and protected their fellow citizens in the surrounding countryside. Today the Jewish presence here is negligible.
The Etruscans were the first to settle in Pitigliano, followed by the Romans and then the Longobards, all of whom recognized the superb defensive advantages of Pitigliano’s location.
The work of these various inhabitants over the centuries can be clearly seen today with the all the buildings along the perimeter of the town seemingly merged into the rock below with no clear line showing where the dwellings end and the rock starts.
Underneath are countless tunnels and cellars dating back hundreds of years.
In the early Middle Ages Sovana was the dominant town locally with the Aldobrandeschi family extending their dominion throughout the Maremma from their base in Sovana.
A family so noted for its pride and hubris that it was relegated to Purgatory by Dante in his Divine Comedy. At the end of the 13th century control of Pitigliano passed to the Orsini family through marriage and the decline of the Aldobrandeschi dynasty, weakened by constant hostilities with Siena to the north and Papal forces to the south. By 1600 it was the the turn of the powerful Medici family of Florence to rule this area.
The most visible evidence today of Medici rule is the marvelous aqueduct close to Palazzo Orsini and its centerpiece, la Fontana delle Sette Cannelle, which in the 18th century had seven functioning water spouts coming out of seven different sculptures of animal heads.
The Etruscan presence that survives today is most notable in the Vie Cave, a network of paths, caves and steep gorges cut out of the rock with various purposes, some still unknown, linked to religious processions, possible escape routes as well as burial grounds. These paths, many of which are individually named and are mostly accessible today, were in continuous use through the medieval period and later, and lead down to streams and ancient disused mills surrounded by lush vegetation.
Pitigliano, like many small remote Maremma towns, has not been blighted by modern suburbs so much of this area below the town remains unchanged from centuries past as a living museum.
The white wine from this area, Bianco di Pitigliano, has had DOC status since 1966 and is an unusual blend of many different grapes but mostly Trebbiano Toscano. It doesn’t tend to travel very far from its source but it can be found in Lucca supermarkets and is a decent enough wine at good prices but Vernaccia di San Gimignano and Vermentino wines from Colli di Luni are far superior Tuscan white wines
Sorano
The approach to Sorano at first glance is very similar to the approach to Pitigliano but on a smaller scale. It sits high up on the tuff rock and at the very top is the forbidding Aldobrandeschi fortress whose original construction and enhancements spanned the period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
It’s not the most attractive fortress, with its two huge bastions appearing as a large solid block directly above the small medieval center of the town, but it served its purpose well, surviving long sieges during the Middle Ages.
The Città del Tufo Archeological Park covers the large area between Sorano and Sovano and contains various Etruscan necropolises connected by the Vie Cave network of deep trenches and canyons carved out of the tuff rocks. Sorano has 3,100 inhabitants so it just about survives today as a normal town but every 10 year census shows it losing hundreds of people like many other remote rural towns in Italy.
Sovana
Sovana is completely different to Sorano and much more popular with tourists but for me it’s a little too similar to places like Monteriggioni, Portofino or Civita di Bagnoregio in the sense that it is superficially very attractive and well maintained but wholly given over to tourism. All these places are in effect outdoor museums with few or no actual residents.
The casual visitor may not mind at all but you quickly notice that the only Italians in these towns are those people selling food or merchandise to tourists and everyone else is in fact a tourist themselves, so you can hardly describe this type of place as being particularly authentic today. I’m not the sort of traveler who likes to simply gaze at ancient well-preserved buildings because for me the character and atmosphere of a town are derived from its inhabitants, the local customs and rituals of daily life.
That being said it won’t take you very long to see Sovana because there is really only one main street of a few hundred yards whose focal point is the area around the clock tower, the Romanesque church and the Palazzo Pretorio, which is now a pizza restaurant.