Well you can’t write a blog about this part of Italy without somehow contriving to squeeze the little rascals the Borgias into it, can you? So after a quiet but windy night in our hill top position at Montepulciano we made our way a mere 17 miles to the Val D’Orcia and more particularly Pienza.
I have to be honest and say that although I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of UNESCO World Heritage sites – regular readers will know, and be fed up with, my constant references to them as we meander our way around Europe – I had forgotten, or never known, that the Val D’Orcia was one of these UNESCO sites.
According to UNESCO “The Val d’Orcia is an exceptional reflection of the way the landscape was re-written in Renaissance times to reflect the ideals of good governance and to create an aesthetically pleasing pictures.” Their grammar could do with some improvement, but I think you get the idea – it’s a very pretty valley!
As good fortune would have it, for the valley and for us, Pope Innocent II was born in the small hill top village of Corsignano. A year after he became Pope, in 1459, he chose his home village as the site of a new city to reflect the ideals of the early Renaissance. Unbelievably, a Cathedral, his and his bishop’s palaces were all completed within three years together with some houses for lesser mortals. Pius gave one of the palaces to then Cardinal Roderigo Borgia on the condition that he demolish it and rebuild it in a more modern style.
Unfortunately poor old Pius II died in 1464 before his grander vision had been realised leaving Pienza with a core of idealised Renaissance buildings surrounded by a small town now with a population of only 3,500. Roderigo did not want to waste money fulfilling his promise so just hastily added a second and third floor to the existing palace in the meantime, despite being celibate, somehow managed to father the infamous Cesare and Lucretzia Borgia.
From our perspective Pienza is a pleasant little town, but is perhaps best appreciated by aficionados of the finer points of Renaissance architecture. The real highlight here, and one well worth coming for, are the superb views over the Val D’Orcia, which, whether it deserves its UNESCO rating or not, is certainly a stunning landscape.
Having exhausted Pienza before lunch we headed for our campsite next to Lago Trasimeno, Italy’s fourth largest lake. Camping Punta Navaccia (43.188815, 12.077200 ) is a rather expensive €20 a night and although open is clearly not really ready to receive visitors. The campsite, which is predominated by scruffy mobile homes and dilapidated caravans which do not appear to move from one year to the next, has an uncared for feel which I’m sure will disappear by Easter. Fortunately for us motorhomes we are situated in a much more pleasant area on the shore of the lake, but despite temperatures rising to about 15ºC today, a cold wind has kept us sheltering inside Basil.
One of our German neighbours takes a prize the most cats we have yet seen on our travels. They have at least five with them, there may be more, some on harnesses, others just wandering about free. We haven’t told Mabel about them because I fear the result may be some Tom and Jerry like incident resulting in cats scattered about the campsite and stuck up various pine trees.
Tomorrow we will get our laundry completed and then on Friday we will be back on the road, this time to explore Umbria, which we have barely visited before.
