Italia 2019: Day 4, welcome to Pitigliano

The trip here was a bit crackers – our driver, whose name escapes me, claimed to be fluent in Japanese and had very limited English. His Mercedes wagon had a GPS that seemed more capable at finding the Stuttgart autobahn on-ramp than the road out of Firenze. And his smoking habit was deeply ingrained, which meant that any profit he was making from the hire was being chewed up by constant intake of Nicoret gum.

Tuscany is mostly pretty, but outskirts of newer towns contain reminders of the fragility of the Italian economy: abandoned industrial units and shopfronts. The countryside holds more than its fair share of vacant farmhouses, but every field was ploughed and vineyards were tended. As we left the rolling valleys and moved into the hills, we seemed to step back in time and everything was old. Winding up the road, we started to see ancient villages and then Pitigliano came into view.

We found out, reading the excellent Hidden Italy notes, that the Etruscans liked hill towns and we would be visiting a number of them; and that the architecture and the excavations were all fostered by the presence of tufo (tuff). We were rather more interested in meeting up with Carolyn and Allan, who had arrived from Rome a little earlier and had not been able to resist the urge for a beer.

We had limited expectations of the Auberge, and that was good because it was all a bit basic; but the osteria over the road was pretty good for lunch and dinner and the views through the town more than made up for any hardship. It was a merry meeting, as Tolkien might say.

We hit the streets of Pitigliano — Caz and Al had been tutored in the correct pronunciation by the driver, who was more appropriately bilingual than signor Tojo — and discovered layers of Italian history, going down the town and down the years reached Etruscan walls. The story of the local Jewish community during the war was quite inspirational, as the local political boss arranged for the Jews to be hidden in the winding streets and out of sight of the Germans.

The town stands on a promontory, as the whole of the area we will be walking on and around is a dissected plateau. It’s so obviously defensible that it’s no wonder people have been living here for millennia and dating the houses is really hard one you go down into the old town. The “new” town has more modern houses – and the laundromat, which was very handy today — but none of the charm of the ancient buildings. The ghetto, if one can call it that, still has its synagogue, Mikvah and museum, even if the community has left of Israel, and the commune maintains it rather proudly.

The chiesa is rather typical, a baroque building with bits from older churches, and completely overshadowed for us by the 11th Century church of San Rocca at the end of the town.

We walked all the way to the lookout at the end of the promontory above the ravine and looked out in anticipation walk through the greenery below. Nothing like anticipation and a bottle of local wine to give you pleasant dreams.