Pienza discovery guide

Pienza is the only designed town in Tuscany. A pope born here rebuilt it from scratch between about 1459 and 1462, and the result — one square, four buildings, nothing wasted — is called the touchstone of Renaissance urbanism and was inscribed by UNESCO in 1996. Behind the cathedral, the lane looks out over the Val d'Orcia, inscribed in its own right in 2004.

The friction is that it is tiny — 2,091 residents — and it knows what it has. Ten minutes covers the centre, the single street is lined with shops selling cheese and oil to day visitors, and between late morning and late afternoon it is busy out of all proportion to its size.

The smart way is to come early or stay the night, and to give the hour you save to the view walk along the back lanes rather than the shopping street. Then drive fifteen minutes into the valley you have been looking at.

What the year does

Pienza is at 491 metres on a ridge above the Val d'Orcia, and the season changes the view as much as the weather.

• January–February — cold, often with fog in the valley below, and very quiet. Fog seen from above is the finest version of this view, and you will have the square to yourself. Some places close.
• March–April — the valley is at its greenest. This is the Val d'Orcia of the photographs, and Easter is busy.
• May–June — green turning to gold, long evenings, the best light on the hills. Also the start of the serious crowds.
• July–August — hot, the valley burnt to pale yellow and brown, and the town busy in the middle of the day. The classic bare-hills image is an August one.
• September–October — the best weeks. Harvest below, warm days, cool nights, clearer air and a thinning of the day tours.
• November–December — ploughed earth, bare hills, low light and almost nobody. Christmas brings the village out into its own square.

If you have one visit: late September or early October — or late March if the green valley is what you came for. Either way, arrive the evening before.

The square, which is the whole point

Go to Piazza Pio II and stand still in it for a while before photographing anything. It is a designed object: a trapezoid, laid out by Bernardo Rossellino from about 1459, with four buildings placed in deliberate relation to one another — the Duomo, Palazzo Piccolomini on the west, the Palazzo Vescovile built by Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, and the Palazzo Comunale opposite the church. The whole square is smaller than you expect and that is intentional.

Palazzo Piccolomini

The pope's own residence, and the one interior worth the time. The visit is guided with an audio guide and takes in the palace and the Renaissance garden behind it — which is the part most visitors do not expect, because from the square you cannot tell it is there. Booking office Monday to Friday 09:00 to 17:00, +39 0577 286300. Prices are not published on the palace's own booking page, so ask when you book.

The cathedral

Consecrated on 29 August 1462, three years after the rebuilding began. Look at how it is lit: Pius II wanted a hall church with light coming in from high up, and what you are standing in is a mid-15th-century idea about how a church should feel, executed in one go rather than accumulated.

The view, which is free

Behind the cathedral, the lane along the southern edge of the town looks straight out over the Val d'Orcia — 61,188 hectares inscribed by UNESCO in 2004, partly because painters have been depicting it since the Renaissance. Walk the full length of it. Early morning and the hour before sunset are when it is worth photographing and when almost nobody is there.

Half a day is enough in the town

Pienza has 2,091 residents and ten minutes of streets. Treat it as a morning, and spend the afternoon in the valley: Montalcino is about half an hour west, Montepulciano about twenty minutes east.

Pienza is an argument made in stone, and the argument is about what a town should be.

Pius II was born here in 1405, when it was a village called Corsignano. He was a humanist scholar before he was a pope — a writer, a diplomat, a man formed by the intellectual revolution of his own century — and when he had the means he did something no other Renaissance figure quite managed: he rebuilt his birthplace as a demonstration of humanist urban theory, and renamed it after himself. Work ran from about 1459 to the cathedral's consecration on 29 August 1462.

That is why historians call Pienza the touchstone of Renaissance urbanism and the first application of humanist urban planning concepts. The square is not decorated, it is composed: the buildings are placed to be seen in relation to each other, the proportions are deliberate, and the whole thing is designed to be understood from a single standing position. Nothing before it had tried that.

The second thing to understand is the scale, because it is the most striking fact about the place. The town that carries this claim has 2,091 residents. A pope spent his own fortune building the ideal city and it came out the size of a village — and then he died, and it stopped. Pienza is a complete Renaissance idea that was never extended, which is precisely why it is legible.

The third thread is the landscape, and the 2004 inscription of the Val d'Orcia makes the connection official. The valley was listed partly because it has been painted since the Renaissance — the cultivated hills behind every quattrocento Madonna. Pienza was built looking at it on purpose. Standing in the lane behind the cathedral, you are inside a 15th-century idea about the relationship between a town and its countryside, with the countryside doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

Pienza is a village of 2,091 people carrying two UNESCO inscriptions and a coach park. The responsible choices are about load and about which street you spend money on.

• Come outside the middle of the day. Pienza is on every Val d'Orcia day-tour itinerary, and the gap between late morning and late afternoon is when a village this size is overwhelmed. Early morning and evening are a different place.
• Stay the night if you can. With 2,091 residents, the difference between a day visitor and an overnight guest is the difference between wear and income.
• Buy from the producer, not the souvenir shelf. The main street sells a great deal of cheese, oil and wine to people passing through. The same products bought from a farm in the valley below — which you can see from the walls — put the money where the work was done.
• Walk the lanes, not just the square. The back streets and the path along the southern wall are where the view is, they are nearly empty, and they cost nothing.
• Respect the Val d'Orcia as farmland. The 61,188 hectares UNESCO inscribed in 2004 are a working agricultural landscape, listed partly because people have painted it since the Renaissance. The cypress avenues and lone farmhouses that everyone photographs are private property on working farms — photograph from the road.
• Book the Palazzo Piccolomini rather than turning up. The visit is guided, with an audio guide, covering the palace and the Renaissance garden; it is not a building you can wander. The booking office runs Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00, on +39 0577 286300.

What Pienza actually costs

Very little, if you spend it in the right places. The square is free, the view is free, the lanes are free, and the one paid interior is modest. What costs money is the main street, which sells food to people passing through.

The palace

Palazzo Piccolomini is the one ticket worth buying, and the visit is guided with an audio guide covering the palace and the Renaissance garden. The palace does not publish its ticket price on its own booking page, so this page does not state one — ask when you book, on +39 0577 286300, Monday to Friday 09:00 to 17:00.

Food, and the one piece of advice that saves money

Pienza's main street is lined with shops selling cheese, oil, wine and pasta to day visitors, at day-visitor prices. The identical products are made on farms in the valley you can see from the town walls. Buying at a farm, or at a shop one street off the main run, is both cheaper and better — and the difference is not small.

The same applies to lunch. The restaurants on the through-route price for people who will not come back; a street away, or in the evening after the tours leave, is a different town.

Everything else

• Accommodation is the main cost and the thing most worth paying for, because Pienza empties in the evening and the square at night is the reason to be here.
• Parking is outside the walls and charged. The centre is small and largely pedestrian.
• The view — the whole southern lane over the Val d'Orcia, inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 — costs nothing, and is the best thing in the town.