Type: naturalistic, landscape, and cultural
Approximate distance: 107 km (recharge in Sovana and Saturnia)
Vitozza Variant: 114 km (recharge in Sovana and Pitigliano)
This itinerary descends from the Amiata slope towards the Etruscan Maremma, crossing one of the central Italy’s most strongly identity-defining territories. It starts from Santa Fiora, leaving behind the water and woods of the Amiata to enter a completely different landscape, where tuff becomes architectural material, road, refuge, and memory.
N.B: This is a long and stratified route, which concentrates a quantity of places and contents in a single loop that, read calmly, would require at least three days of travel. The InBorgo itineraries allow you to approach it knowingly, selecting the stops of greatest interest and choosing where to stop and delve deeper, without the pretension of “seeing everything,” but with the goal of understanding the territory through a few key points.
🗿 Sorano: the carved city and the vie cave
The first stop is Sorano, one of the most representative places of the tuff civilization. Here the village literally grows out of the rock, but it is in the surrounding territory that one of the most extraordinary elements of this area can be read: the Etruscan vie cave (sunken roads), deep corridors carved into the tuff, used as connecting routes, ritual paths, and symbolic access to the city. The vertical walls, shaped over time by incisions and channeling, recount a use of the territory that combines practical function and cultural meaning. The vie cave of Sorano are among the most spectacular and help to understand how the landscape was lived in and traversed already in the Etruscan era.
🏛️ Sovana: necropolis, vie cave, and sacred landscape
The route continues towards Sovana, an ancient Etruscan center and a fundamental node of the itinerary. Here the funerary landscape is still extraordinarily legible thanks to the large Etruscan necropolises, among which the Tomba Ildebranda, one of the most imposing funerary monuments in Etruria, and the Poggio Felceto necropolis stand out. The monumental tombs, along with the vie cave like that of San Sebastiano, build a coherent system in which the settlement of the living and the space of the dead dialogue directly with the landscape. Sovana is also a strategic stop for recharging, as well as one of the most suitable places for a short archaeological walk.
✡️ Pitigliano: tuff, coexistence, and identity
From Sovana you reach Pitigliano, where the tuff becomes urban structure and symbolic identity. In addition to the system of vie cave and hypogeal environments, Pitigliano is known as Little Jerusalem for the centuries-old presence of the Jewish community. Synagogue, museum, unleavened bread oven, and excavated cellars tell a unique story of cultural coexistence, which is also reflected in the local gastronomic traditions.
♨️ Saturnia: water as a rite, not an attraction
The itinerary continues towards Saturnia, one of the oldest thermal sites in Italy. The springs, used already in the Etruscan and Roman eras, were not conceived as “wellness” in the modern sense, but as sacred, therapeutic, and social places. The hot waters that flow at the Cascate del Mulino (Mill Waterfalls) recount a millenary continuity in the use of water as a tool for healing and aggregation. Saturnia also represents a functional stop for recharging, before continuing towards the last stretch.
🏰 Semproniano: the margin of the Etruscan world
Before returning to Santa Fiora, the itinerary touches Semproniano, a fortified village that marks one of the historical limits of this territorial system. Here the landscape becomes more essential and open, closing the route with a clear perception of the border territory, between Etruscan, Roman, and medieval areas.
🔀 Vitozza Variant: inhabiting the rock up to the modern age
The variant through Vitozza adds one of the most fascinating chapters of the itinerary. Vitozza is a vast rock settlement inhabited for centuries, composed of excavated dwellings, rock churches, vie cave, and defensive structures, used continuously until the eighteenth century. Here the tuff is not just material, but a living environment, adapted to the daily needs of peasant communities in balance with a difficult territory. The variant strengthens the anthropological reading of the itinerary, showing a continuity of dwelling practices that spans antiquity and reaches almost modernity.
Why choose it
An itinerary designed for those who want to understand the Etruscan Maremma as a complete territorial system, made of monumental necropolises, vie cave to be walked, carved villages, sacred water, and places inhabited until recent times. Perfect for those who love strong landscapes, archaeology experienced in the field, and long-term histories, where geology, culture, and identity merge inseparably.
