You don’t come across Gerfalco by chance: you get there because you chose it, or because you took the wrong road. The provincial road climbs through the woods of the Colline Metallifere, reaches the village and there, somehow, it ends; you go around the village and then turn back: you don’t go beyond. Inside, cars almost disappear. The streets are too narrow, the stairs many, and the houses clinging to the mountain prevent a car from entering.
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The village’s first lesson
Perhaps this is Gerfalco’s first lesson: here you go slower. At 774 meters above sea level, at the foot of the Cornate, the highest peak of the Colline Metallifere, this medieval village of the Maremma grossetana is made of stone alleys, arches, staircases, houses clinging to the mountain, and woods all around. You climb on foot up to the church of San Biagio, at the top of the village, and meanwhile the noise lowers.
The advantage of summer
In summer, when the plain and Tuscan cities become scorching, Gerfalco has an advantage that, with the summers of recent years, counts more and more: a few degrees less during the day and at night even a difference close to ten degrees. It’s not little. And you don’t need infinity pools or resorts: just open a window.
An imperfect village
The village is not a paradise, it would be wrong to tell it that way. It has a few dozen residents in winter, limited services, and a redevelopment still to be completed. For example, the middle path and the large central access staircase, built in the early seventies and now dilapidated, remain: last August the mayor Nicola Verruzzi announced that the project was ready to go to tender, but the work has not yet started.
What Gerfalco really offers
Otherwise Gerfalco doesn’t promise too much. It offers silence, fresh air, woods, trails, tables where you can eat well, and a community that continues to hold together. And it also offers something that in cities has become more than rare: children who can still run free through the village, go up and down the stairs, invent simple games, and stay outside until evening. Provided, of course, that someone manages first to take the cell phone out of their hands.
The return of summer
In summer the village repopulates: the Gerfalco residents of old return, the children and grandchildren, holidaymakers and tourists arrive. There are restaurants, the historic Club, and, at the end of August, the refined music of the Festival delle Viole (August 23-30), dedicated to the viola da gamba and this year reaching its 16th edition. Just above the village begins the Cornate and Fosini Nature Reserve, over a thousand hectares of woods, meadows, and rocks to explore on foot. And the sea, despite the feeling of being far from everything, is just over half an hour by car. In thirty minutes you can reach some of the most beautiful stretches of the Tuscan coast: a time that, in a medium-sized city, is often not even enough to cross it from one side to the other.
History and the future
Gerfalco was a castle and a miners’ village. Its history is linked to silver, metals, and the generations who worked in the mines of the Montieri territory. Today it could have another future, less noisy: becoming one of those places that don’t ask to be transformed, but only to be lived in with respect. Because the most precious thing here is not what can be added, but rather what remains: simplicity. That of a cool August evening, of a stone staircase, of a door left open, of two words exchanged at the Club. Gerfalco doesn’t promise perfection, but the possibility, at least for a few days, to live with less.
