Pitigliano — just a hoot to say fast — which looks more El Greco than Grosseto. Driving inland from the sea, this fairytale town rises between the trees and rolling hills and feels like you’re looking at it through a stereoscope, which technically I guess your eyes are, but you get the point. Oh wait … 3D glasses, better analogy. A fortress on three sides and carved out of solid tufa, you just wanna sit on the opposite hill and count all nooks and crannies. Actually, pack a picnic and do just that. This whole chunk of the region is called the Area of Tufa — the magical light pumice stone that made possible the engineering feats of the Pantheon, the Colloseum, the aqueducts and just about every other Roman structure. All throughout this area are tiny hill towns that looked like they were honed by hand out of the hillsides. And they were. Etruscans, those tomb-crazy digging fools, were thick as thieves all thru here.

I love the name Pitigliano. It would be cool to put on a summer festival, The Ptolemy Festival in Pitigliano, with lectures on mathematics and astronomy. Breakout sessions on the history of pterodactyls. People could feast on roasted ptarmigans at long community tables. Playing drinking games like “Zoom, Schwartz, Profigliano”. Okay I’m out of Pt words…. Anybody?

Pitigliano is cool. A tiny tufa town that clings to the top of a sharp hill like an eagle on a perch, talons spread downward to hold on. Or, to use another bad analogy, imagine a smart chef that turns a mango inside out and cross-thatches the meat into a tight grid, narrow alleys open to the sun on the sides and top. Marvelous that the whole place is mango-colored, so let’s go with that. It’s yummy. ————————– Continuing with my mild obsession with the name, just imagine an Italian Porky Pig stutter-saying “Piteh-Piteh-Pitiigliano.” You’ll never read it a different way from now on…my burden, now yours…😜

They dug it. I dig it.