Official tourism site of the municipality of Castiglione della Pescaia
The patron saint of the Castiglione area is San Guglielmo, known as San Guglielmo of Maleval.
There is little information about the historical figure of this saint, which is often confused in popular local imagination with myths, legends and folklore linked to the area.
It seems that he was born in Aquitaine in 1099, where he rose to become Duke, that he had a violent and dissolute character, together with a powerful physique, and that he was a lover of wars and tournaments. On the death of Pope Honorius II, he played an active role in the schism that arose in 1130 and supported the antipope Anacletus.
His conversion came about thanks to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. After that, he went twice on pilgrimage to Jerusalem (where he lived as a hermit for two years), and then to St. James of Compostela, in Spain. Finally, after returning to France for a short time, he arrived in Maremma.
Given his new solitary disposition, Guglielmo settled in a completely deserted valley below Buriano, known to the inhabitants as ‘Valle Mala’ because of the unhealthy climate there (due to malaria). It is said that Guglielmo chose a hall to live in there, but found a dragon inside it, which, according to the legend, had been terrifying the inhabitants of the surrounding areas, but Guglielmo had no fear. He made the sign of the Cross, touched the “beast” with his stick and it died.
A small church called the “Romitorio” was built there at the end of the 17th century, and every year, for the feast of San Guglielmo, the local residents go there on pilgrimage.