Piazza Magenta at night in the old center of Capalbio, the prettiest little town in the Maremma. Perched on a hill overlooking the sea, it was an Etruscan settlement in the eighth and seventh centuries BC before the Romans took it, then invaded by the Ostrogoths and Lombards before being donated to the church by Charlemagne in 805.

The town and surrounding lands were sold to the powerful Aldobrandeschi family in the 11th century, who first fortified and battled to keep it, but it was the Orsini from Siena who ruled after 1416, and they extended and completed the fortifications and construction of the town, including building higher fortress walls, the castle and tower, houses, churches, and town squares. Then there was the pirates and malaria…