Valdorcia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Val d’Orcia, or Valdorcia, is a region of Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, central Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, which extends from the hills south of Siena

Siena

Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...

to Monte Amiata

Monte Amiata

Mount Amiata is the largest of the lava domes in the Amiata lava dome complex located about 20 km NW of Lake Bolsena in the southern Tuscany region of Italy.-Geology:...

. It is characterised by gentle, carefully cultivated hills occasionally broken by gullies and by picturesque towns and villages such as Pienza

Pienza

Pienza, a town and comune in the province of Siena, in the Val d'Orcia in Tuscany , between the towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino, is the "touchstone of Renaissance urbanism."...

(rebuilt as an “ideal town” in the 15th century under the patronage of Pope Pius II

Pope Pius II

Pope Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini was Pope from August 19, 1458 until his death in 1464. Pius II was born at Corsignano in the Sienese territory of a noble but decayed family...

), Radicofani

Radicofani

Radicofani is a comune in the Province of Siena in the Italian region Tuscany, located in the natural park of Valdorcia about 110 km southeast of Florence and about 60 km southeast of Siena...

(home to the notorious brigand-hero Ghino di Tacco

Ghino di Tacco

Ghinotto di Tacco, called Ghino, was an outlaw in thirteenth century Italy. He was born in the latter half of the thirteenth century in La Fratta, which is now part of Sinalunga in the Province of Siena...

) and Montalcino

Montalcino

Montalcino is a hilltown and comune in Tuscany, Italy. It is famous for its Brunello di Montalcino wine.The town is located to the west of Pienza, close to the Crete Senesi in Val d'Orcia. It is 42 km from Siena, 110 km from Florence and 150 km from Pisa...

(the Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello di Montalcino is a red Italian wine produced in the vineyards surrounding the town of Montalcino located about 120 km south of Florence in the Tuscany wine region. Brunello, roughly translated as "small dark one" in the local dialect, is the unofficial name of the clone of Sangiovese...

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

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

painting to the modern photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

.

In 2004 the Val d’Orcia was added to the UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

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 Scuola Senese, 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.

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