Val d'Orcia: A Gentle Guide to Tuscany's Golden Hills

Some landscapes have to be earned with effort. The Val d'Orcia is not one of them. This wide valley south of Siena, drained by the little Orcia river and closed to the south by the extinct volcano of Monte Amiata, offers up its best views from roadsides, town walls and café terraces. You can see a great deal of it without ever climbing a hill.

It is a landscape made by people as much as by nature: wheat fields on pale clay, ridgelines marked by single cypresses, farmhouses at the end of white gravel lanes. UNESCO added the whole valley to the World Heritage List in 2004 as a cultural landscape, having already recognised the historic centre of Pienza in 1996.

For travellers over 60 this is one of the kindest corners of Italy — provided you understand one thing before you book. The scenery is spread out between the villages, and the villages themselves sit on ridges with steep lanes. Where you stay, and whether you have a car or a driver, will decide how comfortable your week feels.

A little history

The valley was never wilderness. From the 14th and 15th centuries the Republic of Siena organised and settled this land, laying out farms and fields on the soft clay hills, and the pattern of wheat, pasture, olives and cypress-lined drives you photograph today is the long result of that work.

The painters of the Sienese school put these hills behind their Madonnas and saints, and in doing so turned the Val d'Orcia into one of the templates for how Europeans picture an ideal countryside. UNESCO cited exactly this when it inscribed the valley in 2004: an exceptionally well-kept agricultural landscape that went on to shape the way landscape itself was imagined.

Five small municipalities share the World Heritage area — Castiglione d'Orcia, Montalcino, Pienza, Radicofani and San Quirico d'Orcia. None is large. All of them look out over the same gentle emptiness, and the quietest pleasure here is watching the same hills change colour from one town to the next: vivid green in April, gold in June, bare ploughed clay by late summer.

An abandoned farmhouse in the Val d'Orcia.

What to see

Pienza

The easiest town to enjoy, and the one we would choose as a base. Pope Pius II had his birth village rebuilt as a Renaissance ideal city between 1459 and 1462, with Bernardo Rossellino as architect, and the result is a compact centre you can cross in minutes: one handsome square with the cathedral and the Piccolomini palace, and a panoramic walkway of a few hundred metres along the southern walls, with benches and stone overlooks the whole way. The narrow side streets with their affectionate names — Via dell'Amore, Via del Bacio — open straight onto the valley.

Montalcino

A higher, steeper town on the western edge of the valley, crowned by a 14th-century fortress whose ramparts and interior wine bar let you taste Brunello di Montalcino, born on these slopes, while looking over the hills. Lovely, but be warned: the climb from the lower car parks is real.

San Quirico d'Orcia and the Vitaleta chapel

A village on the old pilgrim route of the Via Francigena, with a fine Collegiate church and the Horti Leonini, a Renaissance garden that is flat, shaded and perfect for an unhurried hour. Just outside town stand two of Tuscany's most photographed sights: the small Chapel of the Madonna di Vitaleta with its flanking cypresses, and the famous ring of cypresses planted alone on a bare slope.

Bagno Vignoni

A tiny medieval village whose main square is not a square at all but a large stone basin of steaming thermal water. You cannot bathe there — a local ordinance forbids immersion in the historic pools — but you can sit beside it with a coffee, and several hotels in the village have thermal pools of their own.

The Val d'Orcia seen from Pienza, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.

The best viewpoints and gentle walks

Viewpoints you can reach by car

The single most rewarding stretch of tarmac is the road between San Quirico d'Orcia and Pienza. It runs along a ridge with several pull-offs, and from it you look down on the Vitaleta chapel without walking a step. The road from Pienza towards Monticchiello is almost as good, and on clear days the bulk of Monte Amiata closes the horizon to the south.

Pienza's wall-top promenade is the most comfortable viewpoint in the valley: level, paved, with seating. Montalcino's fortress ramparts are the grandest, at the price of a climb.

Gentle walks

• The Horti Leonini garden in San Quirico d'Orcia — flat, enclosed, shaded, 20–30 minutes.
• Pienza's panoramic walk — level and short, with somewhere to sit roughly every hundred metres.
• A stretch of the Via Francigena out of San Quirico d'Orcia — a broad, mostly gentle farm track. Walk out 20 minutes and turn back; you do not need the whole stage.
• The track towards the Vitaleta chapel — the last approach is a good 700 metres or more of gravel. Uneven underfoot but not steep. If that sounds like too much, admire it from the road instead.

Easy ways to enjoy the scenery

The comfortable choice here is a slow drive with frequent stops, or a half-day with a local driver so nobody has to concentrate on the curves. There is also the Treno Natura, a heritage tourist train running on the old Asciano–Monte Antico line, about 50 km of track that lost its regular passenger service in 1994 and has carried occasional steam and vintage diesel excursions since 1996. It crosses the Crete Senesi and the Val d'Orcia on selected dates, roughly spring to autumn, often tied to local festivals. Check the current calendar well in advance, and expect historic carriages with steps rather than modern comfort.

Cypresses on the gentle hills of San Quirico in Val d'Orcia.

A day trip nearby: Montepulciano

Just beyond the eastern edge of the valley, roughly 20–30 minutes by car from Pienza, Montepulciano sits along a high narrow ridge. It gives you the finest long view back across the Val d'Orcia, a handsome main square at the top, and the red wine Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, poured in cellars dug into the rock beneath the houses.

Be honest with yourself about the terrain. The town is essentially one long uphill street from the lower gate to the main square, and the gradient is steady. Taxis and local shuttle services can take you to the upper part of town; from there the walk is downhill, which is a much kinder way to do it.

If you would rather have art than slopes, Siena lies about an hour to the north and is a very fine day out — though its centre, too, is built on hills.

The velvety hills of the Val d'Orcia seen from Montepulciano.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Stay in Pienza or San Quirico d'Orcia. Both have small, largely level historic centres, shops and restaurants within a few minutes' walk, and views on the doorstep. Hilltop Montalcino and Montepulciano are beautiful to visit and tiring to sleep in.
• A car or a driver is close to essential. Buses connect the main towns but run infrequently, and the viewpoints are all in between. Many visitors over 60 are happiest hiring a local driver for two or three half-days rather than driving themselves.
• Expect narrow, winding roads, and some unpaved white gravel lanes to farmhouse hotels. They are perfectly drivable slowly; take them slowly.
• Avoid July and August if you can. Afternoon temperatures regularly reach the thirties Celsius and there is almost no shade in open countryside. In summer, go out before about 10am and again after 5pm.
• Wear shoes with grip. Village lanes are cobbled and polished smooth; farm tracks are loose gravel.
• The free thermal park below Bagno Vignoni has no wheelchair access, and the woodland path down to the pools at nearby Bagni San Filippo is uneven and often slippery. A hotel thermal pool is the comfortable alternative.
• Carry water and plan toilet stops around villages — there is very little between them.
• Allow more time than the map suggests. Distances are short but you will stop constantly, and that is the whole point.

The Via Francigena between San Quirico d'Orcia and Radicofani.

What to eat

Pienza is a cheese town. The sheep's-milk Pecorino di Pienza is its pride, sold in every shop from a soft young cheese of a few weeks to hard, sharp wheels aged a year or more. Ask to taste before you buy; the shopkeepers expect it. Early September usually brings cheese celebrations to the town.

The pasta to order is pici, thick hand-rolled strands rather like fat spaghetti, served with garlicky breadcrumbs, with a slow-cooked meat sauce, or with game. Look too for cured meats from the cinta senese, the old Sienese breed of pig, and for pappa al pomodoro and ribollita, the thrifty bread-and-vegetable soups of the Tuscan countryside.

Wine is the valley's other great export. Brunello di Montalcino is the famous name, austere and long-lived; its younger sibling Rosso di Montalcino is lighter, cheaper and easier with lunch. Across the valley, Montepulciano pours Vino Nobile. Meals here are leisurely and portions generous — two courses are usually plenty.

Getting there

A road in Val d'Orcia seen from Pienza.

Our verdict

The Val d'Orcia is one of the few truly famous landscapes that rewards doing almost nothing. You do not have to hike it, climb it or hurry it. Park at a bend in the road above San Quirico, sit on Pienza's wall with an ice cream, drive twenty minutes and stop again — that is a complete and deeply satisfying day here.

The honest caution is logistical rather than physical. Without a car or a driver the valley becomes frustrating, and the hilltop towns ask more of your knees than the countryside ever will. Sort out transport, book a room in Pienza or San Quirico, come in May or October, and you have one of the gentlest great journeys in Europe.

We would send almost any traveller here, at almost any age. Few places give back so much for so little effort.

Sunset over the Val d'Orcia.

“Here the hills do the walking for you — all you must do is stop the car and look.”

Photo credits

• Val D'Orcia.20050927.1915x1312: Sklein999, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• Abandoned farm, Val d'Orcia, Tuscany: Albarubescens, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• VAL D'ORCIA PATRIMONIO DELL'UMANITA' UNESCO VISTA DA PIENZA: PROPOLI87, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• I cipressi della Val D'Orcia: Carlo cattaneo fotografie, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Val d'Orcia vista da Montepulciano: PROPOLI87, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Via Francigena in Val d'Orcia: JP Vets, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Road in Val d'Orcia 52682770061: kuhnmi, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Val d'Orcia Sunset 52607473379: kuhnmi, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons