The brave strong lion is dead.
The famous king of Lamone is dead and the lifeless body scares. In the pale bearded and noble face you could see the Knight, could see that bandit had a noble, civil aspect.
Also a poem – by an anonymous – celebrates the epic deeds of Domenico Tiburzi, controversial figure of the Maremma banditry world of the 19th century.

After more than a century, still today, there are those who condemn him without appeal as a cruel bandit who had been guilty of about 20 homicides and those who mythicise him as defender of the destitute, making him a romantic hero who stole the rich to give the poor.

Anyhow, the adventurous life of Tiburzi ended the night of the 23rd October 1896 when the Carabinieri set a trap for him at Forane, in the country house of the Franci family (to whom he had asked hospitality) where he sheltered with his inseparable companion Fioravanti. We know for sure from the chronicles Tiburzi was hit on a leg during a shooting; it’s not clear what happened after. According to another version the “King of Lamone” killed himself, preferring to die rather than fall into the law clutches.

However, if his last minutes are shrouded in mystery, even more mysterious, almost legendary, is the matter related to his burial. Over hundred years of researches, investigations and inquiries have not been enough to throw some daylight on what really happened that fall night.

According to the most reliable, but also the most fanciful, version, the priest of Capalbio refused to officiate a standard funeral service and burial in the graveyard for that man considered a criminal, a sinner, a godless person.

However the priest had to reckon with the will of the whole community which, on the contrary, demanded a honoured burial in hallowed ground for the “paladin of the rights of the weak”: the body of Domenico Tiburzi could be buried in hollowed ground but … just for a half!

The other half should be outside the cemetery! And so it was. The grave was dug at the gate of the cemetery with the legs inside and the head, the chest – that is the soul – outside. But neither cross nor tombstone, complete oblivion.
Today everything is shrouded in mystery, because, in the meantime, the cemetery of Capalbio has become bigger, and we don’t know where the old gate was, the only reference point of his burial.
And so Domenico Tiburzi, the “King of bandits”, the mythic bandit from Maremma, lays shrouded in his legendary halo.