For a long time the Maremma was one of the poorest parts of Italy. It was covered by unhealthy swamps where malaria and cholera were endemic.

Grosseto, the provincial capital of the Maremma, began to develop around 935, after Roselle, an ancient city that was first Etruscan and then Roman, was devastated by the Saracens.

In 1138, it was granted the rank of Civitas, when Pope Innocent II also transferred the archdiocese from Roselle. From the 11th century, it was a feudal holding of the Aldobrandeschi, passing under the dominion of Siena until they both fell under the control of Florence and Cosimo de Medici in 1559. The noble Florentine family stimulated the city’s economic recovery, digging canals and constructing the city’s present walls and public buildings. The Medici attempted to reclaim the countryside but without much success. It was only in 1765, with the arrival of the Grand Dukes of Lorraine, that the swamps began to be drained. Grosseto came definitively to life under Grand Duke Leopold II (1828) and the great reclamation that was achieved through significant hydraulic engineering works that made the Maremma fertile and luxuriant. In those days, the fields were owned by a few great families while the peasant laborers lived in conditions of misery. This period saw the development of banditry whose unquestioned hero was the brigand Tiburzi. The life of this Italian Robin Hood has become legend and his fame as a defender of the poor has come down to us intact.

Finally, the Agency for the Maremma was created in 1951, an important event that had a tremendous impact on a large part of the area. Houses and roads were built and the Agency for the Maremma expropriated, subdivided and reclaimed the entire area, assigning plots of land to a peasant class that had never owned anything.

Places to see

The Medicean Walls
The building of a new line of walls by Francesco I de Medici in 1574, in substitution of the older ones dating from the 12th-14th centuries, according to his program of making Grosseto a fortress to protect his southern border. The design was by Baldassarre Lanci, and the construction was completed 19 years later, under Grand Duke Ferdinand I. Until 1757 the exterior part was surrounded by a ditch with an earth moat. There were two main gates: Porta Nuova on the North and Porta Reale (now Porta Vecchia) on the South.

The walls are now used as public park and walk.

The Cathedral
The Romanesque cathedral, the main moument of the city, is entitled to the patron St. Lawrence and was began at the end of the 13th century, by architect Sozzo Rustichini of Siena. Erected over the already existing church of Santa Maria Assunta, it was ended only in the course of the 15th century (mainly due to the unending struggles against Siena).

The façade of alternate layers of white and black marble appears of Romanesque style, but is almost entirely result of the 16th century and 1816-1855 restorations: of the originary buildings, it retains decorative parts including Evangelists’ symbols. The plant is a Latin cross, with transept and apse. The interior has a nave with two aisles, parted by cruciform pilasters. The main artworks are a wondrously carved baptismal font from 1470-1474 and the Madonna delle Grazie by Matteo di Giovanni (1470).

The campanile (belfry tower) was finished in 1402, and restored in 1911.

Roselle
Roselle, in Latin Rosellae, now a municipal fraction of Grosseto, was once the main city in the area. Of Etruscan origin, it was built over a hill that offered protection and commanded all the nearby valley. The extent of its dominion is not clear, but probably at its peak included the most part of Vetulonia territory. The city’s splendour was ended forever in 294 BCE, when, according to Livy, the Roman Republic conquered it. After the end of the Roman Empire, in the 5th century CE, Roselle was still the most important centre of the area of what is now southern Tuscany. Its gradual abandon began in 1138, when the diocese seat was moved to Grosseto.

In Roselle Etruscan ruins had been discovered. The ruins of Rusellæ are still to be seen, about five miles from Grosseto — cyclopean walls four miles in circumference, and sulphur baths, which in the last century were restored for medicinal uses. There was formerly an amphitheatre.