Grosseto

Grosseto rides at the centre of the Maremma — Tuscany's wild south, and its own best story. The provincial capital keeps one of Italy's most perfect defensive rings: the Medici walls, hexagonal and complete, their six bastions now planted as a raised promenade so that the evening passeggiata circles the entire city on Renaissance military engineering, cathedral and rooftops inside, the plain's horizons outside.

The land beyond made the identity: the Maremma, once malarial marsh and always frontier, bred the butteri — the mounted herdsmen of the white Maremmana cattle, Italy's own cowboys, who famously held their ground when Buffalo Bill's troupe came through and who still work and compete at the region's fairs. Their country is now the Parco della Maremma's coastal wilderness of umbrella pines, wild horses and empty beaches running to the Uccellina towers, minutes from the city's gates.

Antiquity waits on the nearest hill: Roselle, the Etruscan-Roman city whose walls, forum and amphitheatre spread across a silent site above the plain — Grosseto's mother city, excavated and eloquent — while the Maremma Archaeological Museum in town gathers the territory's finds. The cathedral's striped façade, Piazza Dante's cafés and the province's unhurried manner complete the picture: walls to walk, saddles to respect, ruins to climb — Grosseto keeps Tuscany's open range.