History

The history of Locanda del Ponte starts in 1530 when the bridge which joined the castle on the hill to Siena and Grosseto was destroyed when the river Merse overflowed. Francesco di Giorgio, a famous architect of that time, was called upon for the reconstruction and he used the piers of the old destroyed bridge to make the new one. It was during this period that the Locanda del Ponte was born.

For a long time it was the meeting point for the farmers of the place and a stop over for merchants and bandits such as Stoppa and Tiburzi, famous bandits from the Maremma.?Many legends hover over the Locanda del Ponte and one of these has as protagonist the owner of the tavern, who having fallen head over heels in love with the beautiful owner of the inn, at the nth refusal, killed her by drowning her in the river. This has been inspiration to the public imagination for songs and sonnets.

During the years the use of the Inn remained just about the same until in 1900 it was destroyed by a fire and it was then vulgarly called the "Osteria Bruciata" (The Burnt Tavern) after which, the farmer patriarchal families of the area divided it and shared it out amongst themselves and this was up to the Second World War which determined its destruction.

The bridge, today in ruins, was destroyed by the river in flood in 1962. Dragged some metres away by the water's force, part of the support pillars are still visible today in the place where they originally stood.
Notwithstanding the decline, in the 60's, thanks to the charming atmosphere which the Inn and its landscape have always given, it was used as a filming set for the famous film "La ragazza di Bube" with Claudia Cardinale, until after being completely abandoned it was restored in 1990 using its original name: La Locanda del Ponte.