Every design for Grosseto

Step through Porta Vecchia and you are inside one of the few Italian provincial capitals whose old centre is still wholly enclosed by its walls. The Medici had them built in the sixteenth century, and they have kept their shape almost untouched ever since, a ring of brick around Grosseto's streets and squares.

There is a particular calm to a summer evening on the ramparts, walking from the Bastione Garibaldi to the Bastione Fortezza with the city below and the plain of the Maremma stretching away towards the sea. The town itself began in the Middle Ages on the right bank of the Ombrone, growing as nearby Rusellae, the old Etruscan and Roman city, faded and passed its bishopric on. For centuries the marshes around Lake Prile kept it small; only the draining of the plain let it grow into the largest city of the Maremma and southern Tuscany. Inside the walls, the Monumento a Canapone and the Museo archeologico e d'arte della Maremma are the landmarks everyone gives directions by.

For anyone who grew up here, the map is the walls, the river bend and the road out to Marina di Grosseto on the first hot day of the year.