In the land of Siena, Tuscany, there is a landscape continually worked by man, essential, once made of gullies and biancane and today of hills, crossed by the Orcia River, with cypress trees that follow, in neat rows, the course of its roads.
It is the Val d’Orcia, “a concrete place but open to all dreams” as the poet Mario Luzi liked to call it. Five municipalities, San Quirico d’Orcia, Castiglione d’Orcia, Pienza, Montalcino and Radicofani form the Val d’Orcia Natural Artistic and Cultural Park, a World Heritage Site since 2004, the first landscape in the world to be recognized byUNESCO.
A welcoming territory in every season, today as in the days of the Grand Tour, which opens to the eyes of the traveler and is the starting point of roads and paths to be traveled to enjoy the beauty of a unique landscape, history, art and culture in which its five countries are rich.
Unesco Landscape of the Val d’Orcia plaque, San Quirico d’Orcia
“The Val d’Orcia is an outstanding example of pre-Renaissance landscape redesign, illustrating the ideals of good government and the aesthetic quest that guided its conception. Celebrated by the painters of the Sienese School, the Val d’Orcia has become an icon of landscape that has profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking.” UNESCO 2004.
