Tuscany and La Foce

We decided to rent a car today and make our way to La Foce in Val d'Oricia. On the way we had visited Pienza. This is a town in the province of Siena, in the Val d'Orcia in Tuscany (central Italy), between the towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino, is the "touchstone of Renaissance idealism"per Pope Pius II in the 1400's. Certainly a clean and small hill town, apparently one of the first really planned city.

Then we made our way to La Foce. It was absolutely worth it and the pictures do NOT do it justice.
A little tricky to find, ( thank you Penelope our voice on our GPS ) and it's only open on Wednesdays from 3-6pm. It really takes planning!

In 1924 the Irish-American Iris Origo - the famous author -( War in Val D'Orcia which Jerry read last year)and her Italian husband, Marchese Antonio Origo, acquired the La Foce estate- a combination of olive groves, widespread fields and woodland. The were obviously very wealthy. She grew up in Florence on a Villa that had been original to the Medici Family.
The garden at La Foce was designed by Iris Origo and the famous English landscape gardener Cecil Pinsent between 1925 and 1939. The gardener simply lived with them for those years.


We easily could of spent hours there but alas, thought it best to return the car before dark. Dark in Italy is not like dark in California!
Except for a brief drama of filling the tank again ( even with my language skills and google translate it was a bit counter-intuitive to fill it up ) we had a great Pizza dinner back in Orvieto.