Pienza is my favorite town in Italy. It was probably Edward Hutton's description that prompted my wife and I to visit on more than one occasion. The charming little town, now the self-proclaimed cheese capitol of Tuscany, still has its spectacular views. In Hutton's time the town did not have a inn, but now there is the lovely Hotel Corsignano.
A little later I came to a great castle at a turning of the way over the bare hills, and then at last and suddenly Pienza came into full view, still some miles away, so I set out with renewed heart and won the gate at sunset.
And as it happened my angel went with me, for as I came up the one long street of the place into the piazza where the Duomo stands and the Palazzo del Municipio and the Palazzo Piccolomini, and indeed all the great buildings of Pienza, he led me, and I swear I knew nothing about it, behind the great church on to a narrow terrace, and there I watched the sunset. I could not have had greater good fortune. For it was not only the sunset I saw, but the sunset over a great bare world of mountains and valley—Mont’Amiata, now quite close, and Val d’Orcia—a world actually as beautiful and as strong as Castile, as beautiful, too, and as stony, as tremendous for its marvelous significance. Desolate beyond expression, that wide and desert valley, full of twilight, lay before me, and out of it rose Mont’Amiata, the greatest mountain in Tuscany, and its foundations were as the foundations of a nation. … (230-231)
The story of Pienza is like the fairy tale of Cinderella, which after all has Christian authority, for is it not written that the last shall be first? Before Pienza changed her name, before her wonderful, her incredible good fortune befell her, she was but a little good-for-nothing village of a few hundred inhabitants, and her name was Corsignano. Then in the first years of the fifteenth century a certain poor nobleman, exiled from Siena, came to the village to live by cultivating the few wretched acres which alone remained to him, for he was ruined. With him came his young wife, as noble as himself, and presently in their little homestead she gave birth to a son, whom they called Enea Silvio. This child of the race of the Piccolomini, after a life of adventure, managing his affairs with great astuteness, and meeting with much good fortune, was presently elected Pope, and taking, in memory of Aeneas, after whom he was named, the title of Pius, and of his vanity, in the twinkling of an eye, as only a Pope can he turned the disreputable and dirty little village of Corsignano into the city of Pienza, building there a cathedral and certain palaces, and setting over to govern it a Bishop, that his name might be remembered for ever and his birth place be held in honour in saecula saeculorum…. (231-2)
Having settled this matter, let me hasten to add that as a village Pienza is one of the most charming and delightful places in the world, exceptional too, as villages go, in the possession of a fine cathedral and several palaces, to say nothing of pictures and a museum; and yet with all these, which Pius gave her, the finest thing and incomparably the loveliest and the best which she possesses was the gift of God—I mean the great view she has of the mountains and the Val d’Orcia from the hill-side. For this she should give thanks daily, and we with her, for the rest, we can accept it with a certain complacence, seeing that it is there, not for our sakes at all, but to satisfy the vanity of Enea Silvio, the most human of the Popes who, in the name of Pius II, filled St. Peter’s Chair not unworthily from 1458 to 1464. (232-3)***
*** Pictured above is one of the three volumes of the autobiographical Commentaries of Pope Pius II published by the I Tatti Renaissance Library. They are more readable and delightful than any Papal encyclical, and provide an essential down to earth guide to anyone interested in the Renaissance.
Here is the Pope's description of his home town.
From Sarteano the pope went to Cortigiano. There is a great mountain in the Val d’Orcia which rises up to a narrow plateau about a mile long. At the southeast corner stands a little town, not much to speak of, but possessed of a healthful climate, excellent wine, and all the other necessities of life. Traveling from Siena to rome, one passes Cortigiano on the road to Radicofani, just after the castle of San Quirico. The town sits on a gentle rise three miles from the main road. (V. I, 281)
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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.
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