Val d'Orcia is the landscape that made people believe Tuscany was a painting. The pale clay hills rolling south of Siena, the isolated farmhouses, the cypress-lined roads leading nowhere in particular — it looks composed, as if someone arranged it for maximum effect. Nobody did. This is just what happens when the same families work the same land for a thousand years.

The UNESCO designation protects the view but not the experience. In summer the tour buses arrive before breakfast and the lay-bys fill with photographers chasing the same shot. Come in May when the wheat is still green, or November when the mist sits in the valleys until noon and you can have the whole thing to yourself.

The towns here — Pienza, Montalcino, Bagno Vignoni — are small enough to walk in twenty minutes and interesting enough to stay in for days. Pienza was built by a pope who wanted a perfect city. He almost pulled it off. Bagno Vignoni has a thermal pool in the main piazza instead of a fountain. Montalcino makes Brunello. That's enough.