Italy > Coast of Etruscans and Maremma

Coast of Etruscans and Maremma

From Pitigliano we take state road 74 for Manciano, continuing as far as Marsiliana, from where we turn left toward Capalbio.

Topping a hill overlooking the Maremma shore, Capalbio is a little town enclosed within two concentric circles of walls, with a sentinel's round almost all of which can be covered by foot. Climbing up the little streets that rise to the top of the hill we reach the main square of the town, on which stands the Arcipretura di San Nicola, erected in the 12th and 13th centuries and reconstructed in the 15th, where Romanesque-Gothicel- ements are combined with Renaissance ones, as in the fres-coes adorning the walls, of the Umbrian school.
From Capalbio we descend toward the sea to lake the Via Aurelia, which leads to the fork for Orbetello, about fifteen kilometers away.

Lying at the center of a lagoon, the town of Orbetello occupies a narrow, sandy strip of land stretching toward Mount Argentario, to which it is connected by a dike two kilometers long. Once capital of the Spanish State of the Presidi, the city greets visitors with the Gothic facade of the Duomo, opposite which has been set up a museum that houses the pediment of the temple of Talamone, a priceless Etruscan work dating from the Hellenistic age (2nd century BC) which illustrates the myth of the Seven against Thebes. From Orbetello we go on to Porto Ercole, on the western coast of Mount Argentario.

Situated to the south of the Orbetello lagoon, the promontory of Ansedonia contains the archaeological zone of Cosa, a Roman colony founded in 273 BC and for centuries a flourish-ing commercial center of the upper Tyrrhenian zone, with the remains of an acropolis, walls and a fo-rum. At the foot of the rocky spur the Romans con-structed an ingenious hy-draulic system improperly called the Tagliata Etrusca. and built an open canal through the rock to guaran-tee a flow of water to keep the port from silting up.

Lying between a cove and a small promontory, Porto Ercole was the bhold of the Spanish State of the Presidf, created in 1557 and protected to the south by the Rocca, to the north by Forte Filippo and on the sea by Forte Santa Caterina, supported by the bastion of Santa Barbara.

On a height south-west of the Rocca rises Forte Stella, an outpost for sighting the coast begun immediately after the establishing of the Stato dei PresidT but finished almost a hundred years later. Returning to Orbetello we go north along the Via Aurelia to Grosseto.

From Grosseto state road 322 leads to Marina and then, along the Tombolo pine woods, to Castiglione della Pescaia.