Montemerano: the Heart-Shaped Village Maremma Hides

Anyone driving the road between Manciano and Saturnia, in the heart of the Tuscan Maremma, risks passing Montemerano without even noticing it: a small cluster of stone houses perched on a hill at 286 metres, home to just 487 residents according to the latest census. Yet it takes only the right alleyway to find yourself inside one of the best-preserved villages in the province of Grosseto — listed since 2014 among the Most Beautiful Villages of Italy, but still off the busiest circuits of Tuscan tourism, overshadowed as it is by the far more famous Pitigliano and Sovana.

A Castle with Three Rings of Walls

The earliest traces of settlement in the area date back to the Neolithic period and Roman times, but it was from the 12th century onward, with work completed over the course of the 13th, that the Aldobrandeschi family built the walls of the fortified village we see today. In the 14th century control passed to the Baschi family, then in the 15th to the Republic of Siena, which further reinforced the defences. With the fall of Siena in the 16th century, Montemerano became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The result of these successive rulers is a defensive layout unusually complex for such a small village: three concentric rings of walls, still partly legible today, punctuated by the ancient gates of San Giorgio, Romana and Grossetana. Seen from above, the outline of the walls traces a shape the people of Montemerano don't hesitate to call "heart-shaped" — hence the nickname "village of love" under which the town is often presented.

Piazza del Castello and the Church of San Giorgio

The beating heart of the village is Piazza del Castello, ringed by stone houses with arched loggias, where time seems to have stopped amid cobbled alleys, stairways and small openings that appear suddenly between one building and the next. Facing onto the square is the Church of San Giorgio, a 14th-century building enlarged in the 15th century that holds an artistic heritage out of all proportion to the size of the town: a 1458 polyptych by Sano di Pietro, late-Gothic frescoes depicting the Last Judgment and, from a later phase, the 1491 cycle telling the legend of Saint George, and the so-called "Madonna della Gattaiola" ("Madonna of the Cat-Flap"), a 15th-century panel that owes its curious name to a hole in the frame, traditionally said to have been made to let a cat through. Not far away stands the Pieve di San Lorenzo, the oldest church in the area, already mentioned in a papal bull of 1188. The village is also home to an Art History Library holding around ten thousand volumes, opened in 2012 inside a historic palazzo — an unexpected cultural presence for a village of just a few hundred inhabitants.

A Two-Star Table Down a Village Alley

One of the surprises awaiting first-time visitors to Montemerano is finding, tucked into an alley of the historic centre, the restaurant Da Caino: opened in 1971 and led by chef Valeria Piccini, it holds two Michelin stars (the first since 1991, the second since 1999) and is one of the very few Italian restaurants led by a woman to reach this level of recognition. Its territorio-driven cuisine, rooted in the flavours of the Maremma, sits comfortably alongside the simple, rural atmosphere of the village.

Getting There

Montemerano lies about 6 km from Manciano, along the road leading to Scansano, and about 56 km from Grosseto. It's easily reached by car following signs for Manciano from the Via Aurelia (SS1) or the Strada Maremmana; the historic centre is pedestrianised, with parking available just outside the walls. Its location is also convenient for visitors heading to the nearby Terme di Saturnia and the tuff-stone villages (Pitigliano, Sovana), making Montemerano a natural stop for anyone exploring the Maremma hinterland beyond its most photographed destinations.