By Shahzaib Saqib
Grosseto: The snubbed Italian town that's now winning awards
Despite the world's obsession with Tuscany as a holiday destination, Grosseto seemed to have been left off the tourist map. However, it's now showing Italy how tourism can be done.
When I first set out for the city of Grosseto in early spring, it was a part of Tuscany I'd never visited or heard of, even though I've called Italy home for five years. Despite the world's obsession with Tuscany as a holiday destination, and Florence and Siena just an hour away, Grosseto – with its historical city centre, wild nature reserve and beaches on its doorstep – seems to have been left off the tourist map, visited by few travellers – or even by Italians.
However, this once-snubbed Tuscan city now suddenly finds itself in the spotlight as 2024's European Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism, selected ahead of 40 cities in a European Commission award recognising small, non-traditional, emerging sustainable tourism destinations in Europe. The award aims to create a network of destinations sharing best practices for responsible tourism, acting as exemplars for other European cities and towns.
"Grosseto's success as a Green Pioneer of Smart Tourism is the result of many years of efforts focused on enhancing our natural and cultural heritage," said Antonfrancesco Vivarelli Colonna, mayor of Grosseto, in a statement. "This is just the beginning of our journey towards a greener and more sustainable future for Grosseto."
As the first Italian city to win the award, Grosseto hopes to act as an example of how responsible tourism can be implemented in a country at the top of many travellers' bucket lists. While popular destinations like Venice, Positano and Cinque Terre struggle with overwhelming tourist numbers, Grosseto's efforts illustrate how alternative Italian destinations can encourage more responsible travel, and attract visitors looking for a slower, more meaningful travel experience in Italy.
Grosseto's historical city centre, enclosed by remarkably intact medieval walls and filled with centuries-old buildings, is as visually rich and evocative as any Italian "centro," but it's the city's natural attractions that truly set it apart. Driving just a few kilometres west from the centre, I soon found myself immersed in the vast, 9,000-hectare expanse of the Regional Park of Maremma that stretches from the Uccellina mountains to the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Here, pine trees and fields of wheat give way to flat, dusty plains populated by wild horses and native horned Maremma cows, the landscape more reminiscent of the African savannah than the Tuscan countryside. Long stretches of natural sandy beaches scattered with driftwood frame the park from the west.
The preservation of this park is at the heart of Grosseto's sustainability efforts, as is its focus on the many slow agritourism endeavours within. In contrast to Tuscan tourist hotspots like Florence and the Chianti wine region, Grosseto is one of Italy's least densely populated provinces. The park offers varied pristine landscapes – from forests to dusty plains to wetlands and coastal areas – as well as more than 250 species of birds, plus, badgers, porcupines, wolves, wild boar and deer, some of which are rare or endangered.
But this land wasn't always so inviting to visitors; for centuries this zone within the greater Maremma area was a swampy marshland infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes. In the 1930s, Mussolini launched the bonifica integrale local reclamation project, aimed at restoring Italy's marshy areas to make them arable, and incentivising Italians to purchase plots and set up agricultural businesses.
Today, 30% of the Regional Park of Maremma is dedicated to agriculture, the foundation for the park's 32 agriturismi (B&B-style accommodations on working farms), who must all meet certain environmental standards such as using recycled and eco-friendly materials, adopting energy and water-saving practices and appointing an in-house environment manager. I spent a peaceful night at the sprawling estate of Tenuta San Carlo, surrounded by towering pine trees, saltwater marshes perfect for growing rice and paddocks of striking Maremma cows with their long, curved horns.
Gifted a box of the agriturismo's organic rice grown right outside my doorstep, I made a simple risotto in the apartment kitchen for dinner, relishing my first taste of local produce. The tenuta also cultivates organic heirloom wheat, legumes, chickpeas, alfalfa, clover, flax and oats and offers cooking classes and agriculture-focused tours.
In the morning, I took a guided tour around the estate with Ariane Lotti, fourth-generation owner and the perfect steward with her background in environmental land management. According to Lotti, whose great-grandfather first purchased the land for Tenuta San Carlo in 1936, "It's a good way to diversify income and save the rural landscape because you're also renovating and repurposing older farmhouses. I spend a lot of time giving tours, explaining to people how rice grows, hosting them. It's a really important part of reconnecting people with the land and food production."
Borrowing a bike from the agriturismo, I rode through pine tree-shaded paths down to a wild, secluded stretch of beach. Unlike the often-overdeveloped Italian seaside resorts and beach clubs I was used to seeing across the country, with their rows of plastic beach chairs and music blaring from speakers, here the only structures were improvised driftwood forts providing refuge from the sun; the only sound the lull of gentle waves. The unspoiled natural beaches, combined with lush Mediterranean vegetation, soft sand dunes and clear waters, present a different kind of Italian beach holiday.
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