Pitigliano, a warren of dwellings from elegant palaces and rich merchantseuro houses to abandoned fortifications and pauperseuro hovels built on a long,high rocky promontory and traversed by surprisingly broad (by mediaeval standards) cobble-stoned streets. It has been called Tuscany's euroLittleJerusalemeuro owing to the Jewish community that had established itself here in the mid-fifteenth century as a species of colonial ghetto to escape therigours and perils of Jewish life in Rome. It enjoyed long but intermittent periods of papal protection and was generally, with three horrificexceptions, left unmolested until at last the community dissolved into the Diaspora throughout Italy in the eighteen-nineties. Although there hasneurotbeen any resident Jewish life in Pitigliano since then, the small synagogue was recently restored rather tastefully after a century of neglect andGerman Nazi vandalism in 1940-43.Of quite unusual interest is the persistent influence of kosher cooking in present-day gentile Pitigliano households. The local bakery makesmatzohs and other Jewish-ritual edibles for every-day sale to non-Jews. Interesting features of the localcuisine, features absorbed from those long-gone hearths and pots that no living resident can remember still survive. The labyrinth of cavesand cellars dug in the volcanic tufa promontory on which the town stands is stunning. An excellent lunch is served in a good restaurant in nearby Sovana, one of Tuscanyeurosmany lesser but still eminently visitable towns.Sorano, a handful of venerable houses clustered around a fortress, will welcome you with a glass of the local white, the Bianco di Pitigliano, and aselection of tasty tidbits. The castle was built in the sixteenth century and is one of the dozen best surviving examples of Tuscan post-mediaeval,artillery-age military architecture.