Seggiano, lost in Tuscany
- Mike
- Oct 7
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Nobody stumbles upon places like Seggiano any more because GPS has ruined the whole fun of getting lost on a road trip, though perhaps this is not yet totally true in Italy because GPS still does its best here to lead you down unpaved roads, into dead-ends and over cliffs.
However, you’re unlikely to find yourself in this part of the Maremma wilderness in south-east Tuscany unless you’ve planned to be here. For those travelers who have some understanding of Tuscan geography, the Seggiano area is actually very convenient for the Val d’Orcia which means that you can stay in this very unspoiled region and easily reach places like Montalcino, San Quirico d’Orcia, Pienza and even Montepulciano.
I'm probably not be in the majority but I much prefer the landscape scenery around Seggiano with its profusion of oaks, vines and olive trees to the barren treeless hills of the Val d’Orcia interrupted only by single lines of cypress trees, iconic though they are.
If you are constrained by school holidays to vacation in Tuscany in the peak summer months then you’ll find that the Seggiano area of Tuscany, much like the Pratomagno/Casentino area, is a destination that is refreshingly uncrowded with very pleasant weather in the last week of August. Although there is very little of substance in the village of Seggiano itself there are plenty of interesting places in this part of Tuscany hidden in the countryside around Val d'Orcia, Monte Amiata and Castel del Piano.
Where to stay:
Our choice of Terre delle Sidhe ( a Gaelic word for fairies) may not be for everyone as it’s quite rustic and a little isolated, plus it suffers from the small inconvenience of having a septic tank that cannot digest toilet paper. However its location for a short summer break was ideal for us, in an area of outstanding natural beauty and complete tranquility.
Also the owner, Luisa, couldn’t have been more helpful and is clearly loved by all the guests that pass through here. The cottage is perfectly comfortable with a well-equipped kitchen and a lovely terrace for outside dining facing the setting sun.
Getting in and out of her secluded valley takes no more 10 minutes along a mostly unpaved road that, although steep in parts, presents no real problem and you are quickly at Castel del Piano or, going in the other direction, the small town of Seggiano which is the southern gateway to the Val d’Orcia.
This area is not short of agriturismo accommodation and there is also the impressive looking Castello di Potentino but a friend of ours reported on a very disappointing experience there, describing it as a little shabby and run down with no real guest services despite high prices, so that’s not somewhere that we can recommend.
Where to eat:
Two nearby restaurants stood out for us. The first, La Scottiglia, which is also a small hotel, is in the Monte Amiata foothills and has a traditional Tuscan country menu that includes the dish from which the restaurant’s name is taken; scottiglia is a stew of various types of secondary cuts of meat cooked slowly with tomatoes. Funghi porcini are also on the menu, both as a pasta dish with tagliolini and also by themselves as porcini fritti which is a fantastic way to enjoy porcini and always difficult to replicate well at home.
The second restaurant, with the odd name (explained below) Non Solo Eat Art, is very close to Seggiano and set inside the Giardino di Daniel Spoerri. Surrounded by the extensive outdoor artwork this is a perfect summer dining experience with a less traditional, more imaginative and somewhat lighter menu. The casual atmosphere belies the effort that Jonathan Sapio puts into his restaurant. Locally sourced ingredients, excellence in the kitchen and attention to every detail makes this our top pick for dining in the entire Seggiano area and I have to say that he puts to shame most of the restaurants in our home town of Lucca.
What to do:
Giardino di Daniel Spoerri:
Allow a couple of hours at least to see the Daniel Spoerri gardens with its very eclectic and personal collection of outdoor exhibits. Recently deceased at the age of 94, Daniel Spoerri was a versatile artistic nomad who was mostly renowned in the world of visual arts for his creation of the ‘snare-picture’ genre in the early 1960s. Snare pictures, especially those involving food and table settings were a recurring theme of his artwork over subsequent decades which he called “Eat Art” (hence the restaurant name).
The Seggiano garden was a much later project for Spoerri, beginning in the 1990s, and consists of 113 exhibits by 55 different artists spread over a very large area so a minimum of two hours is required to walk around the park to see them.
Stroll down to the river: you may need Luisa to give you directions to the river (above) and its fresh water pools (below) that lie in the valley between Terre dell Sidhe and Castello Potentino, but in fact they are reasonably close and not difficult to find. If you find yourself here in the heat of mid-summer the river is a good place to cool off and makes for a pleasant shaded walk.
Thermal baths: In the cooler months when river bathing doesn’t seem like a good idea there are free hot water pools 30 minutes drive away at Bagni di San Filippo, below the white limestone rock known as ‘Balena Bianca’.
However if the strong sulfurous smelling water and copious amounts of mud are not to your taste then there are the other natural hot water springs a similar distance away at Bagno Vignoni.
These are ancient Roman baths and for a modest fee there are two pools of different temperatures accessible for an entire day at the Posta Marcucci Hotel & Spa. Bagno Vignoni is just beyond the one thousand year old village of Castiglione d'Orcia on the road towards Pienza.
Monte Amiata: Spoilt perhaps by all the time I’ve spent in recent years in the Maiella massif in the Abruzzo mountains, I was a little disappointed with Monte Amiata (photos below) itself; perhaps because it’s isolated as a single mountain rather than part of a range of peaks which means that the views are more like those from the window of a plane and therefore lack perspective and interest.
Olive Oil: Seggiano’s reputation as an area of high quality olive oil grows every year; if it were anywhere else other than Tuscany it would already be much better known but Tuscany is not short of zones of excellence with regard to olive oil so grabbing attention is hard.
The Seggiano DOP covers quite a wide geographical area of the more remote parts of the Maremma, including Roccalbegna and Cinigiano and the foothills of Monte Amiata. To qualify for the important DOP designation the olive oil produced in this area must be at least 85% derived from the native species of indigenous olive known as Olivastra Seggianese.
In the immediate vicinity of Seggiano we visited Poderi Borselli just below the hill town of Montegiove, a family enterprise producing a range of high quality olive oils and wines.
Abbey of Sant'Antimo: Not far north of Seggiano on the road that turns north-west towards Montalcino is the remarkable Abbey of Sant'Antimo. Built with travertine stone, the original construction began in 1118 but before that there were Roman remains here and the crypt dates back to Charlemagne's visit here in 781 when returning from a visit to Rome by way of the ancient Via Francigena that passes nearby.
The project to build the Abbey was strongly supported by both the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire but for centuries afterwards it fell into decay and eventually abandonment. Though restoration work took place after Italian Unification, it wasn't until 1992 that it was occupied again as an active monastery on a permanent basis.
