Rosia: Pia de' Tolomei's Bridge

Oct. 31, 2012 - PRLog -- Along the old road that connects Siena to Massa Marittima and precisely in the vicinity of Rosia, stands a single-arched humpback bridge built in the Roman times and reconstructed in the year 1000; tradition says that Pia de' Tolomei – the unhappy bride of Nello de' Pannocchieschi - walked over it as she was going into exile in the Castello di Pietra, located in Maremma. This event is also contained in the 5th Canto of Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio.

The biography of this Sienese noblewoman who lived in 1200, has been pieced together starting from Alighieri's Canto: Pia de' Tolomei was the first wife of Nello de' Pannocchieschi, the Lord of Castel di Pietra and Captain of the Tuscan Guelphs; she was probably killed by her husband after imprisonment for a presumed unfaithfulness or simply because he wanted to marry Margherita Aldobrandeschi.

A lot of books have been written about Pia, almost all agree on the fact that she came from a Sienese noble family and married Baldo d'Aldobrandino de' Tolomei before getting engaged to Nello. Pia became a widow in 1290 and from this moment on, things get more complicated: some versions say that she wasn't able to get pregnant and this might be the reason behind her murder, others state the woman cheated her jealous husband and finally that he wanted to marry Margherita... Probably the truth will always remain buried, but a lot of people swear they have seen her ghost crossing the bridge of Rosia, in black nights without moon, completely dressed in white and surrounded by a feeble light.

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Caterina Pomini