The morning fog that blanketed the valley looked surreal from
our hotel balcony. The romance
faded with the visibility as we drove down into it on our way to the tiny but, oh so charming, town
of Pienza. The Val d’Orcia area
was sort of a Medieval planned community, pastoral valleys and hill towns
combined, developed for its beauty and sustainability in the 15th
Century as part of the “humanism movement” by Siena’s nobility. It has stood the test of time and today
is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Pienza, a tiny jewel of a town, was known as Corsignano before “local
boy made good” Pope Pius II decided to remodel it in the Renaissance
style. It was renamed Pienza in
his honor when the work was finally completed 100 years later.
Few residents were out as we wandered around taking photos and
sampling the local pecorino (sheep) cheeses. We covered all of the dozen or so lanes, visited the 550
year-old church and still had a few minutes left on our 60 minute parking
meter.
We left Tuscany for Umbria and the hill town of Orvieto. We parked in the lot below town and
took a series of escalators, stairs, ramps and moving sidewalks up the to the old
town. Lunch was our first order of
business, followed by a visit to the Duomo. Rick Steves devotes several pages in his Italy guidebook to
the Duomo but it didn’t thrill me nearly as much as the ones in Siena or Florence. Orvieto, like San Gimignano, is too
much of a tourist town for my taste.
I much preferred Volterra, Montalcino and Pienza.
