Why people like Southern Tuscany?
Southern Tuscany is looser, less well groomed you may say, than the North of the county – it appeals to country lovers who prefer the company of vertiginous views and gem-like smaller towns to the manicured vineyards and jostling cities of the North. It also appeals to the touring aesthete, who wants a base from which to visit the extraordinary assembly of local towns.
Our part of Italy, the Val di Chiana, has comparatively few tourists, Italian is still spoken in the restaurants and bars, menus are not bilingual, and prices are modest. Yet we are within a day’s trip of a plethora of beautiful places to visit. Our shortlist includes:
• Abbadia S. Salvatore
• Acquapendente
• Arezzo
• Assisi
• Castiglione del Lago
• Chiusi
• Citta della Pieve
• Florence
• Lago di Bolsena
• Lago di Trasimeno
• Montalcino
• Monte Amiato
• Montepulciano
• Orvieto
• Perugia
• Pienza
• Pitigliano
• Sarteano
• S. Quirico d’Orcia
• Siena
We are also in the center of an area famous for outdoor activities including ski-ing, walking, bicycling and horse-riding. Nearby Monte Amiata, rising to 1728m, attracts many thousands of local skiers in the winter months although to be fair the runs are short compared to Alpine resorts. If you would like to walk, the house is on very edge of the huge national park called Monte Ruffeno which is covered in forests of oak and chestnut and full of wildlife. For the horse rider there are two local stables, and one of them, Il Poggio, has been recently patronized by Camilla Duchess of Cornwall when on a riding tour of Tuscany. The other, Monaldesca, is only 15 minutes walk away in the woods above the house.
If you like spas then one of the best in Europe is only six kilometres away. The resort was built by the Grand Duke Ferdinand I de Medici in the seventeenth century around thermal springs famous for their healing properties. It now comprises seven pools, hot and cold, inside and outdoor, as well as a 'Wellness Centre' that 'provides complete health and beauty spa experiences for face and body'. For more information please visit Fonteverde Natural Spa Resort
Thermal baths may appeal more in the colder months; in the summer there are the local lakes (Bolsema, Trasimeno, Chiusi) all of which have beach facilities and cater for visitors wanting to swim and sunbathe.
And if you want to stay home you can relax on the beautiful pergola covered terrace, enjoy the 20 kilometre view, and open a bottle of prosecco – straight out of ‘Cooking with Fernet Branca’ perhaps!
Guests comments on staying at Villa Felceto
"What an amazing week of enjoyment and contrasts: heat, sun, pelting rain, frescoes in Arezzo, blackberry picking, Etruscan baths, cows grazing in the dusk next to your very beautiful house. It has been a memorable holiday."
27 August 2007
"Words are not enough to express our happiness whilst we have been here. We have explored so many charming villages, learnt so much of Italian history, and enjoyed living amongst the beautiful scenery that captures you every time you look out of the windows of Felceto. We were lucky enough to see deer most days, and we were so pleased to see the spring flowers emerging in the wood before we left." 3 March 2008
"The house and Tuscany pulled out all the stops for us. New amazing views at every turn, the weather - a forecaster’s nightmare – hot sun to snow, frost and gales to blow one over. The wildlife joined in and we’ve seen deer, hares, and even a wild boar."
14 March 2008
"The sunset out on the terrace is really the best. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of much of the wildlife from the surrounding area: deer, hawks, lizards, and on our last night a family of wild boar. Aside from the house we very much enjoyed the recommendations in the guide – particularly GianFranco’s in Trevinano and Zaira in Chiusi – both memorable meals."
10 May 2008
"To sit on top of your hill with what seemed like all of Italy ahead of me was the ultimate escape."
15 May 2008
"If you are looking for a quiet and relaxing retreat in the Italian countryside, Villa Felceto can’t be beat. Beautifully restored, and with stunning views of its surroundings, it is the ideal place to relax with a good book and a glass of wine on the terrace, wander around nearby Trevinano or San Casciano dei Bagni, spot wild boar, hawks and deer, cook in the very well equipped kitchen etc.
Additionally Villa Felceto is in easy striking distance of some of the region’s more well known attractions (i.e. Orvieto, Siena etc.). The owners offer great restaurant recommendations (especially the one in Trevinano) and provide no shortage of information for day trips and area attractions. I cannot recommend this villa enough, it is truly beautiful. I didn’t want to leave and am sure that anyone else who stays there won’t either."
1 July 2008
Villa Felceto lies in the renowned Val D'Orcia. To quote from Wikipedia 'The Val d'Orcia, or Valdorcia, is a region of Tuscany, central Italy, which extends from the hills south of Siena to Monte Amiata. It is characterised by gentle, carefully-cultivated hills occasionally broken by gullies and by picturesque towns and villages such as Pienza (rebuilt as an "ideal town" in the 15th century under the patronage of Pope Pius II), Radicofani (home to the notorious brigand-hero Ghino di Tacco) and Montalcino (the Brunello di Montalcino is counted among the most prestigious of Italian wines). It is a landscape which has become familiar through its depiction in works of art from the Renaissance painting to the modern photograph.
In 2004 the Val d'Orcia was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites
under these criteria:
• Criterion (iv): The Val d'Orcia is an exceptional reflection of the way the landscape was re-written in Renaissance times to reflect the ideals of good governance and to create an aesthetically pleasing pictures.
• Criterion (vi): The landscape of the Val d'Orcia was celebrated by painters from the Siennese School, which flourished during the Renaissance. Images of the Val d'Orcia, and particularly depictions of landscapes where people are depicted as living in harmony with nature, have come to be seen as icons of the Renaissance and have profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking.
What Wordsworth thought about our region in 1837
In March 1837 William Wordsworth set out on the last of several continental tours, his route taking him through Paris, Lyons, Nîmes, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, Siena and Rome. He was travelling with a friend, the lawyer, diarist, linguist and literary diner-out, Henry Crabb Robinson, in a second-hand carriage bought for £70 and shipped with them from London to Calais at the cost of £3. The publisher Edward Moxon accompanied them as far as Paris. Wordsworth and Robinson stayed for some time in Rome, making a four-day excursion to Tivoli and Albano and returning on May 21. The two companions were rather ill-matched—the sixty-seven year old Wordsworth was by this time longing to return to an English diet and his wife and family while the talkative, unattached bachelor Robinson kept wishing to prolong the journey as much as possible. They left Rome two days later, heading north and making overnight stops at Terni, Spoleto, Perugia, Arezzo, La Verna, Camaldoli and Pontassieve. A week was then spent in Florence and two nights in Bologna before they proceeded northwards to Austria by way of Milan,Verona, Padua and Venice. They finally reached London on August 7, having covered some 3,800 miles in five months of uncomfortable travelling.
Wordsworth celebrated this trip to Italy in a collection of poems, mostly sonnets, published as Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837, nearly all of which were composed after returning to England. (He had already visited the northern lakes and Milan in 1820, recording his impressions in an earlier series of poems.) Among the locations mentioned, as well as the major cities of Rome, Florence and Bologna, are Acquapendente, Lake Trasimeno (these two places being the closest the travellers came to the site of Villa Felceto), Assissi, Laverna, Camaldoli and Vallombrosa.
Musings Near Aquapendente [sic], the long, blank verse poem that opens the sequence, celebrates the eponymous waterfall:
Yet ever hangs or seems to hang in air,
Lulling the leisure of that high perched town,
Aquapendente, in her lofty site
Its neighbour and its namesake—town, and flood
Forth flashing out of its own gloomy chasm
Bright sunbeams—the fresh verdure of this lawn
Strewn with grey rocks, and on the horizon’s verge,
Unquestionably kenned, that cone-shaped hill
With fractured summit, no indifferent sight
To travellers, from such comforts as are thine,
Bleak Radicofani!
Lake Thrasymene (Trasimeno), which the travellers passed on their way north, is famous as the site of a battle in 217 BC in which a Roman army led by Gaius Flaminius was defeated with a loss of 15,000 men by the Carthaginian Hannibal. After the battle Hannibal wished to bury Flaminius, but the body could not be found. Wordsworth devotes two sonnets to the occasion:
An earthquake, mingling with the battle’s shock,
Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock,
Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim.—
Now all is sun-bright peace. Of that day’s shame,
Or glory, not a vestige seems to endure,
Save in this Rill that took from blood the name
Which yet it bears, sweet stream! as crystal pure.
So may all trace and sign of deeds aloof
From the true guidance of humanity,
Thro’ Time and Nature’s influence, purify
Their spirit; or, unless they for reproof
Or warning serve, thus let them all, on ground
That gave them being, vanish to a sound.
Powers manifold we have that intervene
To stir the heart that would too closely screen
Her peace from images to pain allied.
What wonder if at midnight, by the side
Of Sanguinetto or broad Thrasymene,
The clang of arms is heard, and phantoms glide,
Unhappy ghosts in troops by moonlight seen;
And singly thine, O vanquished Chief! whose corse,
Unburied, lay hid under heaps of slain:
But who is He?—the Conqueror. Would he force
His way to Rome? Ah, no,—round hill and plain
Wandering, he haunts, at fancy’s strong command,
This spot—his shadowy death-cup in his hand.
(After his eventual defeat, Hannibal was hunted by the Romans until he took poison when the king of Bithynia proposed to hand him over to his enemies.)
Although Assissi was visited, it was the monastery of La Verna that inspired Wordsworth to pay homage to St Francis, the founder of the monastery, in a blank verse poem, The Cuckoo at Laverna. Much of this poem was composed on the journey, and it was to form the nucleus of the Memorials. He writes:
High on the brink of that preciptous rock,
Implanted like a Fortress, as in truth
It is, a Christian Fortress, garrisoned
In faith and hope, and dutiful obedience,
By a few Monks, a stern society,
Dead to the world and scorning earth-born joys.
Nay—though the hopes that drew, the fears that drove,
St. Francis, far from Man’s resort, to abide
Among these sterile heights of Apennine,
Bound him, nor, since he raised yon House, have ceased
To bind his spiritual Progeny, with rules
Stringent as flesh can tolerate and live;
His milder Genius (thanks to the good God
That made us) over those severe restraints
Of mind, that dread heart-freezing discipline,
Doth sometimes here predominate . . .
These poems, of course, are very unlike such familiar works as Daffodils and Tintern Abbey. They have been neglected as the productions of a reactionary figure long past the prime of his poetic inspiration. Yet, as well as the interest they may hold for a present-day visitor to Italy, they have a sober strength of their own and deserve to be better known.
