

Visiting Tuscany



Towns of the area

24 / 28


Hotels Farmholidays Restaurants

Inhabitants in 1991: 4.681

The Scansano territory extends for 273.57 square kilometres in the Grosseto Maremma, on a mountainous crest which constitutes the watershed between the rivers Ombrone to the north and Albegna to the south. A castle of the Aldobrandesca county, in 1615 raised to autonomous community by Cosimo II dei Medici, from 1787 following the Leopoldina reform, it assumed its present day dimensions incorporating Montorgiali, Cotone, Montepò, Poggioferro, Murci and Pomonte.

Scansano is mentioned in 1274 in the act of division of the Aldobrandesca county between the two branches of the family the Counts of Sovana and the Counts of Santa Fiora: the castle and its districts were assigned to the latter. The ridge on which Scansano is situated had represented for a long time a natural demarcation line which in the exhausting struggle between Siena and the Aldobrandeschi determined diverse things for the lands positioned on the two slopes. The northern zone which had, in Montorgiali, a centre of major importance, the seat of a small county which comprised also Cotone and the Montepò castle, from 1379 became part of the Siena republic; Scansano, Murci, Poggioferro and all the Southern slopes which had known numerous settlements from the V century B.C. to the late Roman period, instead linked their rise to the events of the county of Aldobrandesca of Santa Fiora. This huge aggregated territory, which in 1439 passed, by lineage, under the dominion of the Sforza conserved its independence until it was constituted to the Grand Duchy of Toscana, and formed until that moment a defensive wedge from Santa Fiora to Scansano, among the possessions of the Siena republic and the little county born from the undoing of the Aldobrandesco dominion. In modern times it became one of the most notable villages of the Maremma, Scansano acquired particular importance in the 1800s as Seat of the summer residence of the Grosseto bureaucracy. In the first years of the 1900s a strong workers movement developed which conducted its struggle until the advent of Fascism and regained vigour after the Liberation. Theatre of partisan operations during the Resistance, Scansano was the birth place of Spartaco Lavagnini, railway man and union organiser, assassinated by the fascists at Firenze 27 February 1921.

Places to visit:
S. Giovanni Battista, church constructed on a preceding 1300s building, it was completely restructured in XVIII century.

Translated by Ann Mountford

return to top of page
  Terra di Toscana

© All rights reserved Polimedia di Laura Fumoni
