Dante Alighieri (Florence 1265 – Ravenna 1321) refers to Maremma on several occasions, describing it as intricate, wild, and difficult to traverse or govern in his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Our land is portrayed as a victim of the corruption and political decay of Italian noble families. Its ancient rulers, the Aldobrandeschi counts of Santa Fiora, have fallen into decline, crushed by the power of the young city-state of Siena.

Medieval Maremma was an inhospitable area, filled with impenetrable thickets and unhealthy, noxious swamps. When Dante describes the wood of suicides—the infernal circle where those who committed violence against themselves are punished by being transformed into “gnarled and tangled trees”—the immediate comparison is with the lucus of Maremma, situated at its extreme borders, Cecina and Corneto:
“nor are such harsh and dense thickets found / in those savage wilds that hate the cultivated lands / between Cecina and Corneto.”

The marshes and stagnant waters symbolically link malaria and Maremma, represented by its horrific inhabitants: the snakes infesting the pit of thieves, so numerous that Dante emphatically claims: “I do not think Maremma has so many as these.”

The sorrowful reputation of Maremma as a sinister and impervious place is further evoked in Inferno XXIX, where Dante describes the horrors of the tenth bolgia, claiming that such a spectacle of suffering would not be seen even if: “the plagues of Maremma and Sardinia / were all gathered together in one ditch.”

“Remember me, who am La Pia;
Siena made me, Maremma undid me:
he knows it, who with his jewel first
had wedded me, and then unmade me.”
(Purgatorio Canto V, lines 130-136)

A character of uncertain identification, although according to many ancient commentators, an important member of the Tolomei family of Siena. Married to Nello dei Pannocchieschi, podestà of Volterra, lord of Massa Marittima, and captain of the Guelph League in 1284, Pia is said to have been killed by her husband, who threw her from the balcony of his castle at Pietra, in Maremma.

The motive for the crime was, according to some, the punishment of infidelity, though more likely it was his desire to remarry the young and immensely wealthy widow Margherita Aldobrandeschi, who was also sought after by relatives of Pope Boniface VIII.

Dante includes her among those who died by violence and repented at the last hour, who wait in the second terrace of Ante-Purgatory (Purgatorio, V, 130-136). The penitent addresses Dante, asking him to remember her once he returns to the world. She introduces herself as Pia, born in Siena and killed in Maremma, as well known to the one who had taken her as a bride, giving her the wedding ring.