An Etruscan village dating from the 4th century BC, Castiglioncello sits on a small promontory that constitutes the farthest offshoot of the Leghorn Hills.
Important military center of Etruscan epoch, thanks to its strategic position on the sea, already in Roman age it was center of luxurious villas of otium. Its tourist fortune starts in '800 thanks to the work of the critic and patron Florentine Diego Martelli that he entertained in his house the greatest exponents of the pictorial movement of the Macchiaioli. Frequented by painters and lettered, Castiglioncello assumes to the first of ‘900 its actual aspect populating itself of refined liberty villas leaned out the sea. Become, in the middle of '900, one of the places of vacation preferred by numerous characters of the cinema’s world it lives in that years his more prestigious season. Full of these traditions, today Castiglioncello is an important destination that proposes a good quality of tourism thanks to the numerous cultural activities in the field of the show, literature, history and art, but also because it gives privileged place for a reflection on the contemporary reality, thanks to the conferences activities and to the new laboratories on the philosophy and communication conceived by the Municipality in collaboration with various Italian universities. Center of these cultural initiatives is the Castle Pasquini, imposing building in Gothic style, built to the end of '800 on the villa that it was of Diego Martelli and absorbed in the Mediterranean stain of its ample park. In 1992, Castiglioncello has obtained the Blue Flag thanks to the FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe). This legion of merit it’s too important to the seaside stations because the parameters take in exam by Italian and European Commission, concerns not only the clean water, with particularly attention to environmental pollution, but also to the quality of public services, street furniture, social and cultural structures, social order and cleaning of the city, road network and general services, with particularly attention to the tourists.
Nature provides not only the frame, but the very essence of these lands: the scent of the pines, beeches and tamarinds scents the air and mixes with the odour of the sea salt and the Mediterranean greenery, which stretches up to the beach, almost joining up with the crystalline seas and the groves of olive trees, larches, cork trees and wild chestnut thickets that have moulded the untamed spirit of the Maremma, while the region’s venerable heart is kept alive by the stone villages that perch like birds of prey above the undulating green and the blue highlights of the Tuscan Archipelago.
