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6th July 2000 Pienza, Montipulciano
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Thursday 6th July 2000
After three quiet days at Colombaio, catching up on this journal etc, we decided to set out for a quiet, short day trip to a couple of the closest hill towns to the south, between Siena and Trasimino in Umbria. I had primarily selected small hilltop villages from the book "The Most Beautiful Villages in Tuscany", with the idea that we would just drive around the countryside, and seek out the best vantage points to photograph them. There was no real intention to stop anywhere, or see any specific cultural/artistic sights. That didn't last long. Ches immediatly began to express concern that all the vast sunflower fields would be havested before she can take her photographs. Hardly likely, but for today, the sun was in the wrong position, and everywhere we drove, they were either facing the wrong direction, turning their bonneted heads away from us, or there was nowhere to stop on the side of the road. We did strike two young couples (tourists), wandering the side of the road with cameras at the ready, trying to find a fantage point.
We did manage some photographs of the striking "crete" countryside as we drove from Rapalano Terme ( a small spa town) to Asciano and Monte Oliveto Maggiore. Crete is chalk cliffs expose by erosion. That is the description in the guidebooks. To an Australian, it is readily identifiable. Rather than describe them as cliffs, although there may well be some we didn't see, what we saw were some extensive areas that have been eroded over centuries by overclearing of trees, and the grazing of sheep. Australia has vast tracts of land where the erosion on these stripped hills, has cut deep channels as the water seeks the lowest valley to flow through. It still used to be a significant sheep district up till WW2, when most people left for the cities for work. Recently, Sardinian sheepherders have moved in to try to resurect the industry, and from the quantity of pecorino chees on sale in every second shop, they must be having some success. I had thought that the sheep were primarily a source of wealth in the middle ages in supporting the textile industry which along with banking was the source of Sienas wealth. I am only asuming that the sheep these days are for their milk alone. We hadn't intended stopping in either Papolano or Asciano, although, I had marked three other small hilltop towns to photograph. The plan was to leave these for the return journey, stopping first at Monti Oliveto Maggiore which has an excelent small working monestary, then on to Trequanda for lunch at a restaurant recomended by Daniele.
We were well ahead of schedule, particularly after we couldn't find a way through some tiny obscure town on a hill, to get to the monestary. We decided to abandon the monestary, and attack it from a different direction, later in our holidy when we go to Montalcino. Instead, we would duck down to Pienza and Montepulciano, then up to Trequanda for lunch. I figured this was a good move in that I had already scheduled a full day to visit these two towns. Beautiful countryside for driving, with only the occasional dirt road, not a lot of traffic and fantastic vistas of this wine producing district, home of the famous Vin Nobile. Both are hill towns.
In the case of Pienza, we were fortunate in finding a parking spot, right beside the lane that leads up to the piazza. Had we not, there was a vast parking station just across the road, but hidden away in behind some houses, and with plenty of space for tourist buses. That was the first clue.
Pienza was just a speck of a town in the middle ages, and known as Corsignano. The local people never felt the need to develop it into anything more, there was no economic or military reason. It was enough for their needs. Then along came the Piccolomini family. They fled Siena after some political torubles, and as this was one of their posessions, went into exile. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was born here in 1405, and some years later when he was elevated to Pope Pius 11, either for his own glory (he named it after himself, Pienza), or to stick it up the nose of Siena, plowed millions of the "pennies of the faithful" into building what has been described as the "perfect" renaisance city. Note, "city" not "town". It is a town. In fact, he had Bernardo Rossellino design it, and the guidbook notes that no one was ever sure if it was intended as a monument to the Pope, or a model city of renaissance town planning. All the above, is the second clue.
We walked up the laneway toward the main street through town. It was immaculate and clean. The houses are all of stone, which was in immacularte condition. All the shutters freshly painted, and window boxes packed with geraniums. Unlike almost every other town, the streets had a large number of terracotta potplants lining them, all again in full flower. No sign of any locals going about their everyday life. In the main street, again more plants and shrubs (hydrangeas). Every other shop was selling either wine or pecorino cheese, (or both), or ceramics and crafty stuff. There were a few restaurants scattered around. The main street which runs up and through the middle of the hill, which is probably only a couple of hundred metres wide, is disected by the Piazza Pio 11. All the major buildings of the town re grouped around it. The Cathedral, the adjacent Canon's House, now the museum, a beautiful columned well, Palazzo Piccolomini (modeled on Palazzo Ruccellai in Florence), the Archbishops palace and a wonderful Gothic Palazzo Comunale (town hall). Inside the Palazzo Comunale there is a tourist information office. It is basically a bookshop. On a small shelf in the courner, I found the free town map. Back outside with Ches, while having a gelato, which was surprisingly cheap at L2,000, (Ches had a wicked custard filled pastry-rich), we looked at the map for guidence as to what was where. The map was very small in the middle of the page, non of the major sights were marked, but bordering the map were ads for twenty or so local businesses (touristico), with arrows pointing to where they were on the map. This was the third and final clue.
We have stumbled upon the role model for "Disneyland". Pope Pius 11 said to Rossellino, "Build me a theme park. I want it to be the ideal Renaissance City. Staff it only with people schooled in servicing tourists, keep it imaculately clean, don't give anything away for free. If the tourists want to know what is where, hire them an "audio" tour of the town. Charge them for every exhibit, and at 1.00 close everything except the restaurants. Lock up the church as well, they don't want to pray, they just want a free look at the only church that hasn't had a single change made since it was built. By Papal decree, nothing can be changed at all. Keep extracting the Lire from them over lunch, and only reoopen the exhibits after 5.00 pm." It never had an economic or military reason to exist until the Pope gave it one.
To be fair, it is a beautiful, clean and architecturally unique town. It just does't live. You don't ever feel you are in a town where people actually live. They probably lock it up at the end of the day, and all go home. If the cathedral ever falls off the cliff, which they feel it has to do sooner or later, the town would cease to exist. The cathedrals foundations were poor from day one, perched over a cliff. There are major cracks in the walls around the back, and as the guidbook suggested it could go at almost any time, I was happy not to have chanced it; they locked the doors 5 minutes before we were going to have a look. Oh!, and the views of the surrounding wine country is pretty good from the pathways around the south side of the town, on either side of the cathedral.
We decided not to contribute to the profit of the town, and drove on to Montepulciano. It was now around 1.30, and it was obvious our orignal plan to dine at Trequanda was out the window. Montepulciano is much larger than I had anticipated. This is and was a town that grew to service the neds of the local people. I guess it grew from the top of the hill down. They built the piazza tight on the top of the hill, and a road up to it which spirals up and around to the Piazza Grande. The guidebook (Cadogan's Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches) suggests two significant things. One, is that if you follow the road to the top, you will begin to believe that it is a vast town, the road is so long. The second is, that as the populations age, and fascilities improve down in the village, the locals spend less and less time up in the piazza. Both are true. It is a biggish town anyway, but it is probably only four block wide, so that the road to the top seems to wind up and up forever. Still, it beats taking the shortcut, which is any number of lanes (or staircases to be more exact), which go straight up. We proceeded without any map, althouth there is a tourist office at the bottom of the hill, because we were in a hurry to find somewhere to eat. As it turned out, we hurried past most of the interesting buildings on the way up, but after obtaining a map in the tourist office in the piazza later, saw them on the way back down.
Halfway up the hill, we lucked upon a caffe. It is an Art Nouveau or "Gran Caffe", the Caffe Poliziano, which they claim that Felini frequented and declaired was of a standard to be found in the major cities of Europe. We didn't know that at the time. We were just entranced by this refurbished Art Nouveau interior, and climpses of a verandah that appeared to have a view. The verandah on the two front rooms is only wide enough for maybe six tables and 12 people. The staff weren't particularly forthcoming, but one eventually indicated that there was a set of step out on the verandah (to the far left), which lead to another verandah below. It isn't Art Nouveau, although the indoor dining room looks to be an extremely upmaket restaurant. We sat out on the shaded verandah, right against the railing, and then looked at the view of the vast plain that stretches off to the east. Immediatly below, all the major vinyards, farmelands and vinyards off toward the mountains to the east-north-east. What's that running along below the mountains? Lake Trasimeno. It is close to 30 km away, and yet it is quite visible; and suddely you realise just how close everything is in Tuscany and Umbria. What an amazing view.
Lunch is light. They don't offer the usual restaurant fare, but the portions are reasonable, and it realy is caffe style. I had a basic tomato with wild majoram bruscetta, while Ches had tuscan pate bruscetta with capers. We shared. Good! Ches then had a potato fritatta with mixed salad and fresh pecorino. Actually it had a slice of fresh and a slice of aged pecorino. Ches offered me the slice of aged pecorino to go with my dish of cold boar meat salami (two of them), pancetta, crostini and a small bowl of warm canellini beans in a light tomato sauce. This is the real Tuscany. Fantistic. Simple and basic, but fantastic. It is now so hot that we rarely have any wine with lunch. Apart from that, I have to do battle with the idiots who claim to be good drivers, and who know how to handle their cars, on narrow back roads. A large bottle of Aqua Minerale, frizzante, goes down extra well. We also travel with bottles of water in the car.
After lunch we strolled a little furthr up the hill, took a bench seat under the trees near the wall, and took in the views to the east-south-east, while we read the guidebook to prepare ourselves for the piazza. We took photographs of almost every direction as we worked our way up and around this loverly town. The Piazza Grande is quite grand. It is large, and they were setting up an outdoor stage for something this weekend. The cathedral is on the grand scale, at least in size. The inside is wonderfully refreshing in that while it is quite vast, it is all plain and simple patterns in grey and cream stone, and the floor in patterns of white and terracotta. Not much decoration apart from quite small square stained glass windows high along each side wall, depicting saints/priests in habits, and a beautiful screen behind and above the altar. The guidebooks claim that the top panel, painted by Bartolo di Fredi is one of the greatest of all 14th century Sienese paintings, and while small and a challenge to the short of sight, is impressive. But back to the fascade that fronts the piazza. They began renovations in the early 1500's, but didnt get any further than to build the terracotta brick front wall. Again to quote the guidebook, it is a tennament for pigeons. Just rough red bricks, that you can only assume were either be sheathed in stone or marble, or cement rendered/plastered. Now I can understand that htere could have been any numbe of problems or reasons for the work to have stalled in the 1500's, but given the obvious wealth of the current community from Vin Nobile, you would think that it was time to complete it.
We returned back down the hill, and stopped to look at the buildings we had misssed on the way up. In particular, there is a building that has Etruscan funerary urns as foundations. These are square and rectangular hollowed out stone boxes that the eutruscans used to contain the ashes of their dead. The faces are all carved with pictures and figures. Aparently the builder of this house had access to quite a few, because he used them to lay the foundations for a substantial house. At least 50 are visible above ground level, up to a height of one and a half metres. One is of a winged horse (pegasus or randwick). Ches vascilated between enjoyment of them as artistic objects, and horror that they should interfer with the ancients graves.
We also witnessed something that typified the difference between Pienza and Montepulciano as real towns. A couple were moving into an apartment on the third floor of a building. In the street was the truck with all their furniture, and set up behind it, a hydraulic crane/lift. They would strap the furniture onto the platform, then raise it to the window, where two other guys would lift it in through the window. This also suddely reminds me that a parisian told us that when moving apartments in Paris, you always take your locks and light switches with you. How peculiar. Then again, no having to worry about who else might have a key to your new apartment. But the light switches????
Anyway, it may be normal to most northern hemisphere people to move their furniture via the windows, but it was novel to us.
By now it vas after 6.00 pm, it had been stinking hot all day, so we forewent the other planned towns, and will have to return later in the week, or month.
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