Ancient Tuscan city of Pitigliano holds a Jewish past yellow

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Ancient Tuscan city of Pitigliano holds a Jewish past
City's rulers offered refuge to a persecuted culture, ushering in centuries of co-operation

The olive groves and vineyards give way to dense vegetation, suitable for wild boars. The narrow, curving road climbs around hairpin turns. Then suddenly, coming into view like a Renaissance version of The Shining, the walled city of Pitigliano fills the skyline.

The yellow stone dwellings cling to each other above yellow volcanic rock so bare it could be the bones of a giant skull. The panorama is stunning -- a hilltop stronghold rising above ravines, protecting the fertile Tuscan interior from interlopers.

Two hours south of Siena, this carefully preserved ancient city remains somewhat removed from Tuscany's well-travelled tourist routes, at least for Americans.

Standing out against the jumble of houses lining the edge of the walled city, two giant arches support the Medici aqueduct. Through the arched stone entrance and into the walled city, the road opens onto the Orsini fortress palace, a 16th-century modernization of an earlier medieval fortress. This was the local Orsini command centre for the independent fiefdom defying the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the north and the Papal States to the south.

Power players in medieval and Renaissance Italy, with their private armies and wealth, the Orsinis dared to defy the pope. A patron of religious tolerance and economic development, Count Niccolo Orsini welcomed Jews to Pitigliano in the mid-1500s when papal encyclicals forced Jews into ghettos in the Papal States followed by Florence and Siena. The newcomers brought banking connections along with artisan skills.

When the house of Orsini lost Pitigliano to the Medicis, the ghetto went up, with Jews restricted to a few streets around the synagogue. But Jewish life continued to flourish in the 1600s as more Jews sought refuge.

By the mid-19th century, the Jewish population of some 400 was roughly 15 per cent of Pitigliano. (Pitigliano's total population currently numbers 4,000.) Later in the 19th century when Italy lifted restrictions on Jews, most left for the big cities. Even with the declining population, until the arrival of fascism and Benito Mussolini's racial laws, Pitigliano prided itself on the harmonious integration of Catholics -- mostly farmers -- and Jews, who were artisans and shopkeepers.

Today, the sound of bells from the ancient stone watchtower mixes with the grinding of gears of motor scooters and tinny Fiats roaring up the inclines. In warm weather, the outdoor cafe across from the Orsini palace is a showcase for insouciant Italian males and women holding babies and balloons along with an aperitif of Prosecco. In the evening, the elderly set down their folding aluminum beach chairs in the narrow streets outside their homes for neighbourly conversation.

Free rock concerts may blast the palace walls in summer, but the municipality of Pitigliano and the province of Grosetto in the region of Tuscany carefully preserve Pitigliano's past.

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Wander down the maze of cobbled streets, under arches and past weathered wooden doors with heavy, rusting locks. Follow the worn stone steps under window boxes and past tubs of petunias and begonias. The alleys end in brilliant views of the surrounding countryside.

In the ghetto (indistinguishable today from the rest of the old city), the synagogue and its underground maze with an oven for baking matzo (unleavened Passover bread), the remains of the mikvah ritual bath, a kosher butcher, and "cantina" for pressing and storing kosher wine preserve the Jewish past. A small museum is a new addition.

An elegant and curvaceous Italian beauty, the synagogue was built in 1598 and lovingly restored in the 1990s. Its rounded wooden lectern and carved pews have been meticulously reconstructed, along with the grey-and-white marble floor. Spidery chandeliers hang from the ceiling.

Miraculously, in the 1960s, when walls of the abandoned building collapsed into the ravine, the women's gallery survived. Once again visitors can climb the stairs for the female eye view of the synagogue through the elaborately carved wooden screen.

One of only three Jews still living in Pitigliano, Elena Servi is the spirit behind what remains of Jewish life. The last

matzo was baked in 1939, and the last Yom Kippur service was held 20 years later.

Born in 1930, Servi does not gloss over the dark days of Mussolini's racial laws, when only 60 Jews remained, or the darker days of the Nazi occupation. A plaque in the synagogue courtyard memorializes the 22 Pitigliano Jews who died in concentration camps.

But Servi also recalled how farmers hid her family during a snowy December, "until people in town reported them to the police." The farmers who risked sheltering them found another hiding place and eventually the family survived in a cave.

In one of the many complexities of history, it was the Pitigliano municipality that restored the synagogue, completed in 1995 with the help of the Jews in the port city of Livorno. Associazione La Piccola Gerusalemme (The Association of Little Jerusalem), of which Servi is president, is made up of both Catholics and Jews.

Merchandising tradition, Tre Quarti (Three Quarters), a tiny shop along Vicolo Marghera, the alleyway leading to the synagogue, sells traditional Jewish baked goods and La Piccola Gerusalemme, Pitigliano kosher wine.

Panificio del Ghetto, a bakery built into the gloomy tunnellike arch at 167 Via Zuccarelli, just before the alley to the synagogue, specializes in Pitigliano's traditional Jewish breads and pastries, now considered totally Italian.

A fitting celebration of centuries of co-operation, at night the city walls and yellow bedrock are bathed in light, the golden Little Jerusalem seemingly floating in time and space.

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The ancient Tuscan hilltown of Pitigliano, known as Little Jerusalem, rises from volcanic rock over densely forested ravines.