The Miniature City of Pienza

 

Inside this tiny city's walls all is medieval and Renaissance perfection. Walk through the main gate, Porta al Prato, and turn immediately right, down the small, flower-hung Via Gozzante to a belvedere that offers a view across half of Tuscany. There isn't a better rural panorama in Italy.

 

From here, you're back to Pienza's main street, Corso Rossellino, in a few seconds. There on the right is San Francisco, a lovely medieval church whose worn, weathered beauty only makes the adjacent Piazza Pio II, Pienza's idealised architectural anomaly, all the more striking.

 

Here there is a cathedral, a papal palace, a fragment of town hall and a well, and that's it: the extent of the "city" of Pienza. That, and a palace on the left, pocked with holes dating from a siege in the 1550s and a mortar bombardment in the Second World War.

 

Several sublime Sienese altarpieces grace the interior of the cathedral, and the papal palace, among other things, has a lovely loggia and a delightful Renaissance hanging garden.

 

Every little street in Pienza is a similar delight, full of medieval nooks and crannies. Food shops abound – the town is celebrated for its cheese – along with cafés, homely trattorias and artisans' workshops.

There's plenty to keep you happy for a day.

 

Pienza may only be a village by size – but is a city by design.