The Cathedral of San Cerbone and the XII century Palazzo del Podestą that houses the Exposition Centre of Contemporary Art and the Archaeological Museum and where the "Maestą" by Ambrogio Lorenzetti is kept, can be visited in the town of Massa Marittima, in the province of Grosseto.

The area corresponding to Massa Marittima was populated both in the Upper Paleolithic and in the Age of Metals (3,000 b.C.), when the passage of man intensified because of the abundance of ferrous minerals in its area, such as lead, copper and silver. The so-called Villanovan civilization settled the area between the IX and the VIII century, mainly in the coastal area. Later, the Etruscans, who were also almost exclusively interested to the extraction of copper and lead, dominated the area. At that time, the territory of Massa was under the control and the influence of the towns of Vetulonia, first, and of Populonia, later.
With the arrival of the Romans, the name "massa" started to appear and it indicated the lands the new settlers had established on the ancient Etruscan territory that belonged to only one administration. At the time of the Lombard domination, the word "massa" was taken from Latin and it assumed the meaning of rural feud. The spread of Christianity caused the rising of the first Episcopal curiae. In the area, the bishoprics of Populonia and Rosselle were created.
In the years going from the VI to the IX century, the population began to move towards the hilly hinterland to escape from the Barbarians, the pirates and to avoid the paludification of the seacoast. This is how the phenomenon of "incastellamento" of the area of Grosseto originated. The first documents on Massa are very ancient and they date to the time when the big feudal families appeared under the aegis of the Sacred Roman Empire. We know that the devastation of Populonnia by Greek pirates in 809 obliged the church to shift the Episcopal seat to Massa Marittima.
In the following centuries, the bishopric of Massa also ruled the political administration of the town, as it can be inferred from the concession of the Emperor Henry IV written in a diploma dating to 1194 thanks to which the bishop Martino obtained Massa and the castles of Montereggio, the future seat of the curia. Later, another vicar called Alberto was encumbered with debts and he decided to cede the town to Pisa in 1216. The town's flourishing economy on the wake of the extraction activity soon convinced the inhabitants of Massa to proclaim the town's autonomy in 1225 by repurchasing the various seigniories. From 1317 on, the Republic of Massa also minted its own currency, an activity that only the particularly rich and commercially important towns could undertake.
Also this free city-state was involved in the bloody fight between Guelphs and Ghibellines with the background of the fight against the Republic of Pisa. In 1335, the inhabitants of Massa decided to set themselves under the aegis of Siena through the signing of treaties that the new ally immediately showed little attention to. The town's vain rebellions, the relentless paludification and malaria caused a period of deep decay. Meaningful interventions started again from the half of the XVI century, when Massa was annexed in the Tuscan Grand Duchy, led by the Medici, together with all the dominions of Siena. The most important works commenced in the XVIII century, thanks the new seigniory of the Lorraine who were mainly interested to reclamations and the town's redevelopment.