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Il Dolce Viaggio: Val D'Orcia


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On Wednesday morning we took our leave of Montepulciano. Even though we hadn't spent much time there it was my favorite of all the cities we had visited in Tuscany. It was the perfect size for exploration on foot and contained just the right mix of tourism and local culture. The main streets had an energetic atmosphere without feeling crowded and there were beautiful spots on the periphery where few visitors wandered. It was quite satisfying to have experienced such an unexpectedly lovely town so close to the end of our journey. Montepulciano may not have the same level of fame as Florence, Siena, or even San Gimignano but if I was to spend an extended period of time in Tuscany it is probably the city I would choose. We decided to hit the L'Ortolano deli again for panini before a long day on the road. We arrived just as they were opening and once again the food was delicious.
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The Val d'Orcia is a loosely defined region around the River Orcia, extending south from Montalcino and Pienza to Monte Amiata and Radicofani. Many consider the gentle hills, vineyards, and olive groves of the valley to be emblematic of Tuscany. This small area contains some of the most celebrated landscape in the world, let alone in Italy. Our plan was to spend most of the day visiting a series of destinations in the valley as we continued our southward route back towards Rome.
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We hadn't been to a market in several days but I had a fairly solid lead on a weekly event in Chianciano Terme just fifteen minutes south. We spotted the market fairly easily although it wasn't clear where we could park. I dropped everyone off and then spotted a small outdoor lot which had just one free space. By the time I reached Mei Ling and the kids they'd already bought some chicken from a rotisserie and a watermelon and were waiting for me to pay. The market appeared small at first but then rounded a curve and extended another couple of hundred meters. Like most of the weekly village markets it was mostly clothing but there were some fruit stands, two rotisseries, and some specialty food vendors. One family displayed an amazing variety of preserves, cheese, honey, bread, and cured meats. I wanted to buy everything but I had no home to bring it back to so I settled for a bag of rosemary breadsticks. Back at the rotisserie I asked about some small roasted birds that turned out to be pigeons. I bought a whole one, unsure of where I would find the opportunity to eat it.
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Up to this point we hadn't found the time to visit Castiglione d'Orcia, the hilltop town I had spotted from Bagno Vignoni. It was about a half hour out of our route but we were in Tuscany after all. Seeing more of the landscape was kind of the point. I made sure the Google Maps GPS was set to avoid highways and we headed west. The two lane road took us through scrubby countryside followed by more of the rolling, golden fields for which the region is famous. At one point we passed a side road to an agriturismo that was lined with particularly stately and symmetric cypress trees. There were cars pulled over to the side and people taking photos so we decided to return to the spot after seeing Castiglione d'Orcia. As we approached the town we realized there were actually two ancient fortresses, one atop the hill that was occupied by the town and the other on a crest a short distance away. It was the second, taller fortress that I had seen from the thermal bath, a thirteenth century Sienese construction named Rocca di Tentennano.
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No one else seemed to be interested in seeing Rocca di Tentennano that day. There was a restaurant but we had the good fortune to be there on the one day of the week it was closed. This meant there were empty tables where we could consume the food we had bought at the market at our leisure. The pigeon was quite salty and I had to eat about six apricots for my mouth to stop feeling like cotton. From the hill we could see the town topped by the other fortress, Rocco Aldobrandesca. On the hillside below us was an orderly grove of olive trees, part of an organic farming operation begun by a local entrepreneur.
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We weren't in the mood to buy tickets to tour what was likely a very barren interior of the fort so we walked up a narrow path up the steep hillside to the base of the edifice. The tower had an unusual structure with a wide base that sloped inward and then rose vertically about halfway up. Large gaps in the stone walls had been filled in with bricks in what looked like a fairly recent restoration.
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I failed to realize that there was a tiny medieval village on the far side of the fortress called Rocca d'Orcia, which might have been interesting to see. Instead we drove the short distance to Castiglione d'Orcia where I left everyone in the car to buy a bottle of water and have a quick look at the town's main square, Piazza dell'Unità Italiana. We left without visiting the second fortress.
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We made sure to retrace our path so that we would encounter the beautiful side road again. There were still cars and people taking photographs and we recognized one couple that we had seen earlier. They had been there taking photographs for over an hour. Later I realized that the spot is actually marked on Google Maps as a viewpoint which likely explained why so many people were showing up to this out-of-the-way location. Rows of cypress trees have become one of the most recognizable symbols of Tuscany and it probably seems like one hasn't really been there without having them as the background for a social media post. This time we waited a short time for our opportunity and took our pictures. People were being very polite and staying out of each others' way but I'm sure that's not always the case.
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A few miles further down the road we passed a particularly beautiful landscape of wheat fields on rolling hills dotted with perfectly symmetric straw bales. I love the look of these golden cylinders that look like beads fallen from a giant's broken necklace. I could see that this particular field was very accessible from the road and I pulled the car over to the shoulder. I walked out into the straw and took some photos with the bales in the foreground while Mei Ling snapped a couple of me from the car.
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I was going to bypass Bagni di San Filippo in favor of Saturnia until I saw the exit signposted and impulsively turned off the road. We were somewhat ahead of schedule and if these thermal baths weren't anything special we could continue onward without wasting more than half an hour. The area was poorly signed and all I could see was a line of cars in paid parking extending downhill as far as I could see. Only the very last spot was open and I figured I was lucky to get it. We changed into our bathing suits and I tried to pay for parking but my EasyPark app wasn't pulling anything up. We had to walk about a hundred meters downhill to find a parking machine and then I had to clamber back up to the car with the ticket while the others continued downward. To add insult to injury once we got closer to the entrance to the springs there were several parking spots open that weren't visible from the top of the hill. A sign that said "Fosso Bianco" pointed down a dirt path that eventually brought us to a footbridge near a cliff of travertine. We crossed the bridge and could immediately see the area where people were bathing. Although there are reports online of an admission charge, there was no staff present at the baths to request it.
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Bagni di San Filippo was similar in many ways to the Parco dei Mulini baths at Bagno Vignoni, in that it was composed of cloudy pools surrounded by travertine deposits. The main difference was that these baths were much more extensive, with numerous pools on several levels including one area of shallow terraced pools on a hill of travertine. Cleo was still turned off by the cloudiness of the water but the boys got in and made their way to one of the waterfalls. The warmth was slightly above body temperature, similar to Parco dei Mulini. There was a fair number of people in the pools and the surrounding area but it wasn't unpleasantly crowded.
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The coolest looking part of the baths was clearly the terrace of pools on the travertine hillock. There was no simple way of getting up there so I walked along the base with Ian looking for the safest route upward. Eventually I selected an approach and we gingerly clambered upward taking care not to find good footholds on the slick travertine. It was more risk than I usually take with Ian, as a fall could have resulted in a nasty injury, but I felt it would have been a wasted stop without experiencing the terrace. Eventually we made it up safely and soaked in the largest of the staircase-like progression of pools.
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I realized that having visited two of these thermal springs that it wouldn't be worth going to Saturnia which is the most famous. It would be a detour from our route south and my family really wasn't that into the experience. Saturnia would likely be too crowded with tourists to be enjoyable anyway. Just past the spot where we had entered the springs was the beginning of the town of Bagni di San Filippo which had several small restaurants. The kids had a late lunch while I moved the car closer to the bottom of the hill. They hadn't eaten much during our picnic at Rocca di Tentennano. We changed back into street clothes in the car and proceeded onward.
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Radicofani introduced itself to us quite dramatically. We rounded a turn on the road and a hill appeared with a very striking square tower at the top. It looked like the rook from a chessboard. Mei Ling asked me if that was where we were going and I had no idea. We'd already stopped at so many places that day that I couldn't remember a thing about Radicofani except that it was on my itinerary.
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Sure enough, the turns of the road brought us closer and closer to the hill and it soon became apparent that the foreboding castle was part of Radicofani. The town was tiny, with just a scattering of modern homes at the outskirts of the historical center. We found a place to park just outside the center and I set off with Cleo and Ian. Spenser was sleeping and Mei Ling elected to stay in the car with him. The narrow streets of the old town were completely devoid of pedestrians aside from us. The buildings had a very distinct appearance that was different from anything we had encountered previously. The walls were constructed with irregular rows of dark grey and reddish-grey stone blocks interspersed with a patchwork of bricks which gave the entire town a consistent red and black appearance. Within the apparent homogeneity there was an endless variety of patterns that seemed almost random, although there must have been some principle underlying this unusual combination of building materials.
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As we wandered through the town we encountered fascinating alleys and some beautiful small piazzas. There was a scattering of restaurants but as we were between the lunch and dinner hours they were all closed and empty. The only person we saw in the town was the proprietor of a gelateria we walked into in search of a bottle of water.
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Eventually we reached the most charming point in the town, Piazzetta del Teatro. If there was once a theater here it no longer appeared to exist but that did not diminish the appeal of the square at all. In its center a rickety canopy provided shade for a collection of tables that likely belonged to the delicatessen that had closed for the afternoon. Planters filled with brightly colored flowers were scattered around the canopy area and at the bases of the buildings that surrounded the square. These were some of the most beauteous exemplars of the town's dark stone and red brick style. We spotted two elderly folks here, a man exiting his front door and a woman on a balcony, which was more than we had seen in any single place since we had entered the town.
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Once we had perused every street in the town we drove to the top of the hill where the fortress stood. This mighty edifice was constructed by the Carolingians in the ninth century who likely chose the site due to its strategic position overlooking the ancient Via Francigena. It soon passed into the hands of the papacy where in the twelfth century it was used unsuccessfully by Pope Adrian IV in an attempt to stop the progress of Frederic Barbarossa towards Rome. I was fascinated to learn this fact as it meant this was the second year in a row where our travels had accidentally coincided with the events portrayed in one of my favorite novels, Umberto Eco's Baudolino. Just over a year earlier Ian had recognized the medusa heads that the novel described within the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul. The fortress remained strategically important and passed through the hands of successive masters of the region until it was largely destroyed by an explosion of stored munitions in 1735. The tower was finally restored in the 1990's although I was unable to determine any details regarding how much of the existing structure dates back to its original construction.
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The kids advised me in no uncertain terms they weren't going to be subjected to yet another castle. I didn't really mind saving the money on the entrance fee and being able to explore the site at my own pace. As in the town there were no other visitors in sight. From the base of the tower I could look down the hill over the tightly packed cluster of rooftops of the town we had just left. In other directions I could gaze over the vast, wrinkled expanse of the Val d'Orcia.
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After some hesitation I explored an odd depression in the ground that led into a small network of subterranean tunnels. Finally I ascended a series of external and internal staircases that led to the highest level of the fort. At the ground floor I regretfully passed a display of photographs explaining the tower's reconstruction without looking at them, not realizing I wouldn't be able to find any information on the subject online afterwards. Inside the tower I heard voices for the first time but it proved to be just a security guard talking on his cell phone. Eventually I reached the battlements and caught my breath while appreciating the beauty of the landscape that surrounded me. For a short period at the beginning of the fourteenth century the fortress was occupied by a local bandit known as Ghino di Tacco who achieved notoriety for robbing travelers and afterwards treating them to a banquet. I wondered if he had ever stood in this very spot and surveyed with satisfaction the territory that was now under his control.
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I returned to the car to resume our southward course. It was about a forty-five minute drive to our next town, Sorano. About halfway there we experienced our most frightening driving episode of the entire trip. We were on a routine stretch of two lane road in the countryside, driving next to a rocky embankment. About two hundred meters ahead a large truck rounded a curve coming towards us, spilling over the median as they commonly do. I continued forward expecting him to correct course and he failed to do so, remaining at least a foot over the center line. At the same time I could see up ahead that the embankment was projecting inward leaving me no room at all to move to the right. I realized that I couldn't be sure I had enough room to squeeze between the oncoming truck and the embankment and I applied the brake as forcefully as I could without potentially entering a skid. We came to a complete stop just ahead of the narrowing segment of road as the truck thundered past inches to the left. Mei Ling and I stared at each other with widened eyes. Driving in Italy often felt hazardous but I had always been able to convince myself I was overreacting. After all the local drivers seemed completely at ease despite their apparent recklessness and we hadn't seen a single accident. This time disaster had been way too close to shrug it off and I wondered if we had simply been fortunate not to witness any destruction on the roads or if it was me who was doing something wrong. Luckily we only had another day left of driving to worry about what could have happened if we had reached the bend at the same moment as the truck.

Posted by zzlangerhans 05:03 Archived in Italy Tagged road_trip family family_travel travel_blog tony_friedman family_travel_blog radicofani bagni_di_filippo chiancano_terme rocca_d'orcia castiglione_d'orcia

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A very interesting blog about a favorite part of Italy. Glad to see you are getting off the beaten path. It's very beautiful and very friendly there. BTW, we've seen quite a few nasty accidents on the roads in Italy. We're VERY careful.

Happy travels.

by Beausoleil

Thanks for reading. We had six weeks to explore Sardinia, Corsica and northern Italy which was just the right amount of time to make sure each region got the attention it deserved.

by zzlangerhans

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