27 August 2017
This takes about an hour and 40 minutes to get to and it goes very near Cortona and pretty close to Chiusi and Montefalco. If you come back via Chiusi then you end up driving along the south of Lake Trasimeno. Although I was keen to do this visit I have to confess that I was a bit disappointed with Pienza. It was built in a short period of time in the fifteenth century and it feels like it. All quite planned. Not quite a new town feel but it is very ordered, a bit too pretty, too twee for my liking with none of the organic growth that comes where somewhere grows up over a period of time, and is created by the people who live there and how they use the town. The old town itself is tiny and has no real depth to it. The best way of describing it is to say it feels a bit like a film set for tourists. It takes about 15 minutes to walk around the City walls, for example.
The cathedral in the main square is fine. Some nice gothic gold paintings hanging inside. It is quite small for a cathedral. The most disturbing bit is the rather worrying slope downwards from the main door towards the alter which is disconcerting especially if you look at the cracks along the floor you can see the church is under pressure and is probably sliding slowly down the hill.
I then went to look at the diocesan museum which is supposed to have some good paintings but it was shut – on Tuesdays – a point to note.
The church of San Francesco is down the road. Nothing to report on this at all. Frescos were very damaged. One of them is quite striking – Luca Signorelli but there is not a lot to see. I could have gone around the Ducal Palace as well but decided on this occasion that having a coffee and reading the paper would win out.
It is about 45 minutes’ drive to Chiusi from here – and on the occasion we drove it, we did it with Italian drivers who either drove 20% under the speed limit or disregarded it altogether and tailgated with gay abandon until I pulled over to let them past.