Historically Grosseto was first an important Etruscan centre and then a garrison town.  During the early middle ages the Aldobrandeschi family lived here.   A large estate which with  salt mining went through a prosperous commercial period.  After the crisis of 1300, caused by devastating flooding which transformed the area into marshland infested by malaria and then a grave plague epidemic, the city rose up again with the entrance of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, when the Medici family launched impressive restoration and building work.

In 1860, Grosseto chose annexation to the Realm of Italy.  The Fascist period registers, with the new drainage work, the definite defeat of malaria, which had afflicted the great plains of Grosseto for centuries.The antique city centre is enclosed inside an imposing hexagon shaped perimeter wall.  It is here the Cassero Senese (forecastle) is positioned.  This building was built in 1345 on the inside the Bastioni S. Lucia and the Vittoria (Bastione fortezza).  Ruins of the residential quarters in Siena style are visible from the road of the historical centre.

To be visited the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, built in 1190 above the ruins of the Church of S. Maria with the altar of the Madonna and the Baptismal Font (XV century), the stoup of 1506, the Madonna of Grazie and the wooden crucifix of 1400.  Also interesting the Province Palace of  early 1900 century realised in neo-gothic style, the arch of the Porta Vecchia , a fragment of the 1300 wall, grafted (joined) during the XIV century onto a gothic stone arch; the Cassero del Sale (salt forecastle), which in 1300 acted as a customs house for the transport of salt;  the Church of San Pietro, the oldest church in Grosseto with Lombardic and late Romanesque elements, already cited in testimony in 1188;  the Church of San Francesco, of the XIII century, with the Chapel of S. Antonio of Padova of the 1600 century.

In the Piazza Dante Alighieri, the 1846 sculpture dedicated to Leopoldo II when the drainage work was completed.  This work represents a half-naked woman, tired from years of hardship, supporting a child affected by malaria.The same monument is more well known by the nickname given to Leopoldo II, “Il Canapone”, for his blond hemp coloured hair.  Once again testimony to the cheeky Tuscany spirit.

A certainty is the exploration of the Archaeological Museum, with Etruscan, Roman and Medieval finds.  Inside the Palazzo di Piazza, Baccarini and the Natural History Museum with the cast of Ominide de Baccinello and a large collection of prehistoric bones, insects, butterflies and beetles.