VAL D’ORCIA
CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
In the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena there is a cycle of frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti which can be dated to the first half of the 14th century. One of these is a visual description of the effects of good government: a paved road starts from the walls of a city and goes into land softened by gentle hills where, amid hamlets and castles, the nobity hunt and the peasants are engaged in their activities. The scene is inspired by the Val d’Orcia, which from the gates of Siena comprises the villages of Castiglione d’Orcia, Montalcino, Pienza, Radicofani and San Quirico d’Orcia: an extraordinary merging of natural beauty and human intervention, in gently sloping hills, picturesque medieval hamlets, avenues of cypress trees, vineyards and olive groves, evidence of a cultural landscape that has evolved over the centuries, keeping its precise identity. The many iconic places in Val d’Orcia have been a backdrop in Italian and international films; the countryside from Pienza to San Quirico d’Orcia for The Gladiator, Sant’Anna di Camprena for The English Patient, Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza and the Abbey of Sant’Antimo for Romeo and Juliet and Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Zeffirelli.
NOT TO BE MISSED
“With what he had found […], he could afford to enjoy himself, seated at the steering wheel, the view of the fields of wheat caressed by the wind, the river flowing by and, when the cold came, the clear sky, invigorated by the north wind, and the snow-covered hills that stood out on the horizon. In the summer, he could stop to rest under a tree or, following the directions of the signs, sit on the grass near the Etruscan tombs.”
The description by Anna Luisa Pignatelli of the Tuscan landscapes in Il campo di Gosto gives a good idea of the ideal attitude with which they are to be enjoyed: slowness.
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“The bad weather’s fireworks /
will be a murmur of beehives late
tonight. / Worms have gnawed
the rafters of the room, / and a
smell of melons / pushes up from
the floorboards. The soft / puffs
of smoke that climb a valley of
elves and mushrooms up to the
peak’s transparent /cone cloud my
windowpanes, / and yet I rewrite
to you from this place, this faraway
/ table, from the honeycomb cell
/ of a globe launched in space – /
and the covered cages, this hearth
/ where chestnuts explode, these
veins / of saltpetre and mould are
the frame through which / you soon
will break. The life / that fables you
is still too brief / if it contains you!
Your icon reveals/ the luminous
background. Outside, the rain.”
News from Amiata, in The Occasions, Eugenio Montale
A silent, autumnal and misty landscape, which
arouses an ancestral religiosity emerges
from the lines that Montale wrote during a
stay on Mount Amiata, on the southern edge
of the Val d’Orcia. With its thick forests of
beech trees and meadows, its woods full of
mushrooms and chestnuts and rare human
settlements, the mountain seems a clear
break from the Arcadian stretches of hills
surrounding it. Anyone who has been lucky
enough to reach the summit on a clear day
says that from up there they can see the sea,
the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago and
even Rome.
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The Italian UNESCO Heritage sites tell their story through the words of great writers who have celebrated their history and beauty
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“YOU REACHED THE FARMHOUSE, SURROUNDED BY HOLM OAKS, ON AN UNPAVED ROAD FLANKED BY BRAMBLE BUSHES, AND ON ITS EDGE, JUST BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE HOUSE, THERE LOOMED A LARGE, CONICAL AND PERFECT CYPRESS TREE […]. WHEN THE SUN DISAPPEARED BEHIND THE HILLS, ‘THE BIG CYPRESS,’ AS IT WAS CALLED, TURNED A DARK BLACK TENDING TOWARDS BLUE, TO GRADUALLY MELT INTO THE NIGHT.”
READING RECOMMENDATIONS
Reading suggestions to dream about the Val d’Orcia.
- Nero di luna, Marco Vichi (2007). Set in Chianti and the Sienese hills, this excellent noir is also a ghost story which tells the story of Emilio Bettazzi, a writer from Florence who rented a country house, convinced that he would use it to write a novel. All sorts of things will happen to him, including strange nocturnal visions and raids in mysterious villas.
- Il sangue di Montalcino, Giovanni Negri (2010). A thriller set in the world of wine-making which starts with the murder of an oenologist in the Abbey of Sant’Antimo. It will be Inspector Cosulich who investigates and reveals an intrigue that tastes of wine, sacrilege and truths to be discovered.
- Il poggio dei cipressi, Daniele Lotti (2016). Ledo Antinelli, a middle-aged man, faces the death of his father to a long illness. He then inherits a huge estate near Montepulciano, which he decides to put up for sale, unaware that in actual fact it did not belong to his father at all but was only in his name as a figurehead. The sale is concluded with a wealthy American woman, triggering off a series of mysterious and puzzling events.
- Foschia, Anna Luisa Pignatelli (2019). In this family novel with severe tones, which has made the name of Pignatelli famous to the general public, the mist is that which permeates the Tuscan countryside, where Marta relives her conflictual relationship with her father Lapo.
- The Tuscan Contessa, Dinah Jefferies (2020). The novel is set in San Gimignano in 1944. The heroine is Countess Sofia de’ Corsi, who lives in the lush Tuscan countryside, contemplating the wide views over the Val d’Orcia from her window. When the Nazis arrive, her life will cross paths with that of Maxine, a reporter who has come to the area to document the war.
- Il campo di Gosto, Anna Luisa Pignatelli (2023). The novel tells the story of Agostino, known as Gosto, divorced, with a daughter who only cares about money and surrounded by ill-intentioned people. The events alternate descriptions of the marvellous landscapes of the Val d’Orcia with the inner shadows of the characters.
- Notti in Val d’Orcia, Dario Pasquali (2023). Against the picturesque backdrop of the Val d’Orcia, the arrivals of engineer Andrea Solo, the intelligent executive of a powerful pharmaceutical multinational corporation, and of Beatrice Lucci, a woman of great determination with ambitions of economic and social success, mark the start of a series of heinous murders which follow one another relentlessly.
Children’s books:
- Scoprire la Val d’Orcia. Storie di Santi, Re e Briganti, Chiara Cipolla (2011). This book is a key to enter the treasure trove of the history and stories of the five villages that make up the Val d’Orcia, from popes to emperors, saints and bandits, to be discovered in the faithful company of the pilgrim Orcino.
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