Val d'Orcia

The Val d'Orcia is the landscape the world means when it says Tuscany - smooth clay hills rolling south of Siena, farmhouses set on ridgelines behind processions of cypress, wheat that flushes green in May and burns gold by July. UNESCO inscribed it as a cultural landscape because this beauty was designed: Renaissance Siena consciously reshaped the valley into an ideal of good governance, and Pienza - rebuilt in the 1460s as Pope Pius II's model city - is the theory built in travertine, its little piazza a manifesto you can cross in twenty seconds. Around it orbit Montalcino, whose Brunello is one of Italy's most serious reds, Montepulciano with its Vino Nobile cellars sunk under Renaissance palaces, and Bagno Vignoni, the village whose main square is a steaming medieval thermal pool. The photo stops - the Vitaleta chapel, the cypress groups near San Quirico - have become pilgrimages in themselves.

What you actually see

• Pienza - the pocket-sized ideal city of Pius II above the valley.
• The cypress avenues - the ridgeline farmhouse compositions photographers queue for.
• Montalcino and Montepulciano - hill towns anchored by serious wine cellars.
• Bagno Vignoni - the village square that is a steaming thermal basin.

When to go

May and June for green wheat, poppies and long light; September and October for harvest gold and vintage activity. July and August are hot, hazy and busiest at the famous photo points, which draw sunrise crowds year-round.

Honest expectations

You need a car - the towns are small and the beauty is in the driving between them. The iconic viewpoints are on working farmland: park properly and do not walk into the wheat. Pienza and Montepulciano get coach traffic by late morning; Brunello tastings are wonderful and priced accordingly.

Nearby

Siena is under an hour north; Montepulciano borders the valley's east and the Crete Senesi clay hills continue the scenery northward.