Do you want to discover what to do in Pitigliano and around but aren’t sure where to start?
You’re in the right place.
Pitigliano is a Tuscan town with a few features that make it absolutely unique: it sits embedded in the rock and is called, for this reason, the tufa town. I happened upon it by chance one spring and, just looking at it from outside, I fell in love straight away.
Do you want to know why?
Easy: the town of Pitigliano stands on the top of a tufa crag, so much so that it recalls the famous Civita di Bagnoregio, as well as small villages like Calcata or Vitorchiano. Pitigliano’s old town is built entirely of tufa, and the ochre colour of this stone marks the whole village and its alleys.
Built of tufa, for instance, is the synagogue of Pitigliano’s Jewish ghetto. This building is very interesting because it tells a long story of coexistence between the town and the Jewish community, so much so that Pitigliano earned the nickname “little Jerusalem”.
In short, in the town of Pitigliano and its surroundings there are plenty of things to do and see.
Want to know more?
Read on to find out why it struck me so much and to learn the darkest pages of its history.
Off we go!
The origins of Pitigliano
When I arrived in Pitigliano my eyes went wide. I saw it from afar, resting on nothing. It sits perched on a spur of rock, surrounded on three sides by deep ravines. The houses overhang the void: it seems suspended above the forest and the rivers flowing below, halfway between earth and sky.
It’s an incredible sight.
Some locals told me that Pitigliano has been inhabited since Etruscan times, from which settlements and necropolises have been found. After all, its position and abundance of water made it a perfect point for controlling the surrounding area.
Its medieval appearance, on the other hand, has stayed intact thanks to the fortified Orsini palace, which I’ll tell you about shortly, and the magnificent bell tower of the church of Saints Peter and Paul, the town’s cathedral.
But that’s not all, because the history of Pitigliano is far more gripping. A fief of the Aldobrandeschi, it passed to the Orsini in 1293, when Anastasia Aldobrandeschi married Romano Orsini bringing the county as her dowry; it was to Pitigliano that the Orsini moved the seat of the county.
Here’s why Pitigliano is called little Jerusalem
Pitigliano took the name of little Jerusalem because, from the 16th century, it welcomed a flourishing Jewish community, which found refuge here and a ghetto district to live in.
I had the chance to visit the Jewish museum and the synagogue in the heart of the ghetto, where I discovered the community’s customs and traditions. Admission costs 6 € (5 € reduced) and includes the synagogue and the route through the rooms carved into the tufa.
In the old caves of Pitigliano, dug into the stone, wine was kept, the area’s finest product. I then saw the kosher butcher’s shop, where livestock was slaughtered according to tradition. There are also the oven where the typical unleavened bread was made, the ritual bath (mikveh) and a dye-works, all in a very cramped space.
The most beautiful room is the synagogue, richly decorated and almost baroque in look: it was built in 1598. Today the synagogue of Pitigliano is part of the museum because it is no longer regularly used for services: at least ten adult Jewish men (over 13) are needed for the rites to be celebrated.
The museum itself didn’t strike me especially, but I was shaken reading the plaque remembering the Jews of Pitigliano who died in the concentration camps. In such a small, peaceful town I didn’t expect to find so many lives broken for no reason.
The persecutions, though, began long before the Second World War: read on to find out more.
The Sfratto of Pitigliano
A discovery I made in Pitigliano concerns a typical Jewish sweet shaped like a little stick: the sfratto (eviction).
This sweet recalls when, in the 17th century, an edict confined all the Jews of the town and its surroundings to the ghetto. The Grand Duke of Tuscany’s officials knocked on the doors of the houses to order the Jewish families to leave them, using a small wooden stick.
Much later, the Jews created this elongated sweet that recalls precisely those sticks. Inside the pastry is a delicious filling of honey, walnuts, citrus peel, nutmeg and anise: really not bad at all.
I tasted it at the “Forno del Ghetto”, where the owner let me try some specialities of the Jewish and local tradition.
I recommend it.
The Orsini palace
One of the most beautiful buildings in the town of Pitigliano is the Orsini palace. The medieval structure is truly imposing and was restructured between 1543 and 1545 by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger for Count Gianfrancesco Orsini.
Today it houses the Diocesan Museum of Palazzo Orsini and the Civic Archaeological Museum, but in the past it was important for a very specific reason.
The palace was a stronghold first of the Aldobrandeschi and then of the Orsini, and it defended Pitigliano from the constant attempts at subjugation by Siena and Orvieto.
A fierce resistance that lasted until 1604, when Count Gian Antonio Orsini ceded the town to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to settle his debts, beginning the village’s slow decline.
Would you like to know the symbol of Pitigliano? It’s the Medici aqueduct, whose construction began in 1636: its fifteen arches (two enormous and thirteen smaller) still cross the centre today and appear in all the finest photos of the town.
The white wine of Pitigliano
In this area wine is a sought-after local product, the fruit of centuries of selection and work. The Bianco di Pitigliano holds the DOC certification and is produced only in the municipalities of Pitigliano and Sorano.
I don’t know much about wine, but the one I tasted was truly excellent, perfect alongside the local specialities!
How to reach Pitigliano
Pitigliano lies a few kilometres from the border between Tuscany and Lazio, in a very distinctive area called the “tufa area”. The towns here are very similar to one another and, as I was saying, strongly recall the more famous Civita di Bagnoregio.
The most practical way to get to Pitigliano is by car: whether you come from the north or the south, I recommend taking the A1 and exiting at Orvieto if you arrive from the north, or at Orte if you arrive from the south.
Being about 80 km from Grosseto, another option is the train, with the stations of Albinia, Orbetello or Grosseto; from there you’ll continue by bus. Also by bus you can reach the town thanks to daily connections from Grosseto, Florence or Siena.
And you, are you drawn more to Pitigliano’s story as a “little Jerusalem” or to the sight of the tufa town suspended over the ravines?
