Around The World Without Flying: Italian villages, including Montepulciano and Pienza

On our Insight Tour, we had driven over 2,000 km across Italy. Sunday 14 May marked the start of my next tour of Italy with a different company, known as Gartour. I believe that we would have driven over 1000 km just on that tour. The tour was entitled ‘Flavours of Tuscany’.

This was a four-day tour with much smaller group, and a very different style of tour leader. Our coach was small, just an 18-seater. That would have been alright, even though the tour brochure said we would be travelling in a ‘luxury coach’, if it were not for the fact that there was so little room for our legs you could not stretch them out and so it was very hard to walk when you first got off the coach each time. And I am vertically challenged. How the gentleman in our group who was well over six feet tall managed I have no idea. And this was the tour that ended with dramas with our motor, described in my post ‘What a day!’. Still, having some delightful companions made up for a lot.

On that Sunday after leaving Rome we first visited the hilltop town of Montepulciano, yet another ancient hilltop village full of medieval and Renaissance buildings, with great views of the surrounding countryside, surrounded by very high, thick walls, and full of very steep, winding, narrow streets with a small city square at the centre. On this occasion, street stalls were set up in the square - it was their market day. However, we had no opportunity to browse the stalls or the small number of shops. Instead we went to a wine-tasting, as this village apparently is famous for producing one of the oldest wines in Italy. At that event we also tasted some local produce - ham, salami and cheese.

I do apologise for jumping around like this, but now I am back to talking about my second tour of Italy.

What intrigues me is that we visited, or just saw in the distance, many hilltop villages across Italy, all of which were surrounded by very tall, very thick walls made of large stones or old bricks. Why so many (apart from the obvious fact that Italy is full of hills)? The answer lies in the fact that until just over a century ago, Italy was not a unified country. As a country, it is younger than both Australia and the US. Instead it consisted of many small, separate kingdoms, each of which was ruled by a powerful family. For example, Florence was ruled for a long period by the Medici family. And over the centuries these villages were often in conflict with one another, or with invading armies from such places as Austria, or if they were along the coast, with marauding pirates. Their safest place was to be up high, though not all the villages were up high. Being near a river was also a great advantage. In these cases the villages had two sets of thick walls with a dry moat between them. In addition to being protected by archers, the citizens would pour boiling water and boiling oil onto the heads of their enemies when they came close. The villages also had a maze of narrow winding streets to help confound their enemies should they breach the walls. It took some very powerful people from the northern parts and the southern parts to push for unification, despite very strong opposition, including from the Pope of that time.

Back to our travels . . . Our next village for the day was Pienza, a delightful Renaissance village built under Pope Pius II, which apparently is well known for its pecorino cheese. Again it was market day, and what astonished me was the main product being sold was plants that are so familiar to us in Australia - including hydrangeas, roses, geraniums and camellias. And unlike the other villages we visited, the main square was a garden with flowers and grass and footpaths, not just cobblestones. It was lovely to see. Unfortunately my photo of the square did not work out. And we were only allowed one hour inside the village, some of which time was spent getting a drink. It was quite a hot day.

Where we tasted the wine. This is out of sequence because it was taken with my phone camera.

The view we saw from near the entrance to Montepulciano, including many vineyards .

Approaching the entrance to Montepulciano, which was a steep walk.

Approaching the town square with its market.

One of the many steep laneways in the town.

A view of some of the homes in the town.

Leaving Montepulciano.

A peak into the small palace inside Pienza. This palace made up one of the sides of the village square. It can be seen that the building and its design is younger than in the other walled villages we saw. A church made up another side.