Pretty little Sorano north east of Capalbio was first inhabited by the pre-Etruscan Villanovans as early as the 9th to 7th centuries BC. It was a thriving Etruscan city, controlled by nearby Sovana, and like that town and Pitigliano, was built on a tuff stone bluff and connected by an extensive network of ancient cavoni roads dug into the rock.

The Romans ignored it, but the Aldobrandeschi and Orsini families ruled and fought over it, and amongst themselves, in the middle ages, and heavily fortified by the Orsini in the 13th century because by that time the Republic of Siena wanted it too, and didn’t give up. The striking Orsini fortress that overlooks the town is considered one of the most important examples of Renaissance military architecture.