The pretty pathway around the top of the outer fortress walls in Capalbio, with the inner walls looming even higher above it. There are a few doorways to apartments built directly in the walls here, plus one or two cafes and heavily fortified entrances to the town. It’s even got a name: Via IV Novembre, which celebrates the unification of Italy.

The name Capalbio comes from the latin name for the white alabaster rock that the town stands on, Campus Album, and was inhabited during the iron age, then an Etruscan settlement in the eighth and seventh centuries BC before the Romans occupied it. After the fall of the Roman empire in 476 AD all hell broke loose. The walls were built for a reason, you know.