The charm of the underground cellars of Pitigliano

The distinct architectonic characters, the varied forms. Everything contained in a deep hole in the tuff, in the Maremma, Tuscany

by S. C.

Under the built-up area of Pitigliano- in Tuscany, in the province of Grosseto- is situated an underground invisible and striking city.
It is composed by caverns, niches, tunnels and especially cellars, where wines are kept in cool. The cellar of Pitigliano is typically composed by a “cellaro” and by a deep hole in the tuff that terminates in the “bottaio” (barrels place), where wine is preserved in barrels and in demijohns. These rooms contained all the necessaries for wine-making, such as the press, line, bigongi, wine pots, with the characteristic ceramic panate and rabbine, made in loco by the “cocciai” (potters) of Sorano.

Cellar are the result of the local ability to excavate the tuff, by producing very diversified rooms, sometimes the resultant of unceasing modifications of the-existing rooms, such as stables, Etruscan graves or ancient underground houses. Often cellars were made out the characteristic corn wells, endowed with a typical ovoid shape, when wine assumed a preeminence role in the Pitigliano economy.

Almost all the cellars are characterized by well defined architectonic tracts, such as the squared shapes of the “cellaro” and the “bottaio”, the circular vault of the hole and the ingenious trick of the small “mine” (tunnels), used for the drainage of the water seepages. Sometimes pillars with capitals, masks and decorated niches are also present. It is rare, instead, the point arch vault tunnel, present in the old cellar present in the “la Fratta” district. It was used by the local Cooperative Cellar for the aging in oak barrels of the red and white “Gran Tosco” wines, cited in the Purgatorio by Dante, canto XI, v. 58.

Origin: Fuori Casa Wine&food Events, Caterina Andorno and Roger Sesto