Photo © Christihan

Fool's Gold: the Old Mining Town of Gavorrano

Delve into the labyrinths beneath this Maremman village

Deep in the Tuscan badlands of the Maremma, the town of Gavorrano stands on a hill by the name of Poggio Ballone, some 260 metres above sea level. A stone's throw from the Etruscan coast, its origins are appropriately ancient, as the San Germano necropolis, a mere three or four kilometres to the east, confirms. Gavorrano is known for being the place where Pia de' Tolomei, immortalised in Dante's Divine Comedy, was murdered by her husband: her death is commemorated and re-enacted every summer by the townsfolk. Its other claim to fame is as a mining town, for in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries its wealth depended on the vast reserves of pyrite that lay beneath it. Today the mines are closed, but you can still explore the old shafts and tunnels, and even attend a concert or play in the open-air theatre that inhabits one of the old defunct quarries.

Contents

1.

See one of Dante’s most beloved characters brought back to life
2.

The stage in the stone
3.

Visit the parish church of San Giuliano

See one of Dante’s most beloved characters brought back to life

Castel di Pietra, Gavorrano - Credit: Lorenzo Biagini

In the municipality of Gavorrano, and indeed very close to the town itself, stand the ruins of Castel di Pietra. The castle has been all but completely razed to the ground, but one of its surviving walls bears a plaque with lines from Dante’s Purgatorio: “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia: / Siena mi fè, disfecemi Maremma” (Remember me, who am Pia: Siena made me, Maremma unmade me). The speaker is Pia de’ Tolomei, a Sienese noblewoman who made an ill-starred marriage to a local grandee, Nello dei Pannocchieschi, the lord of this very castle. Pia was killed by her husband, who is thought to have pushed her from one of the castle windows, and Gavorrano remembers her murder every August with an event known as the “salto della contessa” (leap ofe the countess). The townspeople don medieval costume and form two processions, one for the Tolomei and one for the Pannocchieschi: the evening concludes with a woman falling from a window, enacting the fate of La Pia.

The stage in the stone

Parco delle Rocce, Gavorrano - Credit: GDelhey

Gavorrano’s economy was traditionally based on the mining of pyrite, often known as ‘fool’s gold’ on account of its brassy lustre: indeed it was the largest source of pyrite in Europe at one point. Its mines closed in 1981, but were converted into a multimedia Mining Museum, which form a constituent part of the National Technological and Archaeological Park of the Colline Metallifere Grossetane. Visitors can descend into the tunnels, which were used to store the explosives that were deployed to extend them even further, and can see the Pozzo Roma, an iconic tower which marks the spot where the pyrite was brought to the surface. One particular mining pit has been transformed into an open-air theatre, the Teatro della Rocce, which puts on a variety of shows and spectacles every summer.

Visit the parish church of San Giuliano

Chiesa di San Giuliano, Gavorrano - Credit: Sailko

Gavorrano's parish church has been dedicated to the town's patron saint since 1529. The site had been home to a sanctuary far back in the mists of the early medieval period, and Rationes Decimarum - a record book of tithes - named the church here as a parish seat as early as the late-thirteenth, early-fourteenth centuries. The current building is neoclassical in style, having undergone substantial remodelling in the 1700s, but the artworks inside date back much further. These include the seventeenth-century painting that is the Madonna del Buonconsiglio, and a marble Madonna with Child by Giovanni d'Agostino, a Sienese sculptor who lived and worked in the mid-1300s.