Jim Declares "Favorite City in Italy"

Monday, August 6th

We woke up in Siena and needed to go to sleep in Rome, but how we got from point A to point B was still up in the air.  Jim had been given many recommendations of beautiful Tuscan towns to see and we were a little overwhelmed by all the choices.   In the end, we decided on the little town of Pitigliano as a half-way point  between Siena and Rome and set off driving through the hills of Tuscany.  Neither of us had ever driven in this area before and though it was very beautiful we were surprised by how yellow and dry it all was.  I can only imagine how different this drive would have looked in spring or fall, rather than the dead of summer.  The fields of cut hay and dying sunflowers, dotted with Cyprus trees, were lovely.   And seemed to go on for a very long time, until we turned the corner and, voila… 

There was the ancient town of...Sorano - we thought we had made it to Pitigliano but that was 10 km later.  Together they make up the Area del Tufo (Tuff), known for the striking tuffaceous rock settlements, villages, and medieval fortifications from the Etruscan- Roman period.      Both towns protrude from large, sheer outcrops of tuffaceous rock, a volcanic rock that is light, moderately hard, and easily cut.   (Though this is called the "Area of Tuff", much of southern Italy, including Rome and Naples, is formed on this compressed volcanic ash that is soft when first exposed to air but hardens over time making it a good building material).  The Etruscan cut many caves into the side of the rocks, that today in many cases  have been converted into garages and wine cellars.  

We had hoped to spend some time in the Vie Cave, a road network full of caves that links several of these Etruscan settlements in the trench between the sheer cliffs of tuff.  Tourist information (where we could have found a map of the caves) is closed on Mondays and we didn’t have that much time to spend, so we did the next best thing – ate lunch in a restaurant where our table was below ground in a carved out cave.

As we headed back to the car, Jim declared Pitigliano his favorite town in Italy.  We hit the road again for the second half of our drive into Rome and in search of our hard-to-find apartment pretty near the Vatican.  We didn't get all settled in until after 7 and then headed to the Piazza del Popolo where we walked up to a beautiful vantage point just inside Villa Burghese giving us spectacular first views of Rome at night.  

We went to dinner at a place recommended by our apartments and had a great waitress who would crinkle her nose if we were ordering the wrong thing…following her advice we had a great meal including finally some cauliflower and spinanch, in addition to our pizzas and pastas.  When we tried not to order dessert, that was met by the largest look of disgust…so we had no choice but to take her recommendations for a baked apple and cake with strawberries.  All delicious!