One of my
favorite Tuscan towns is Pienza with its charming piazzas, quaint street
names, floral displays and magnificent Renaissance architecture. The
area‘s landscapes, cypress avenues,
fields of grain and orderly vineyards
are mirrored in paintings conserved in the Duomo and museum .
The town’s most
famous son Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, future
Pope Pius II, was born here in 1405 when
the town was called Corsignano.
The family crest, 5 half moons on a
cross, decorates the Piccolomini library
inside Siena’s Duomo.
 |
| Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini second from left, in red. |
 |
| a perfect Renaissance courtyard |
Here Pinturicchio’s
fresco cycle shows the high points of Piccolomini's careers as diplomat,
poet, humanist and pope. His secret memoirs
or Commentaries written in the
third person are lively accounts of shipwrecks and
travels to Libyia, Norway,
England and Scotland.
 |
| Duomo of Pienza and Rossellino's fountain |
He was sent
to Scotland in
1435 on a secret diplomatic
mission and during the terrifying sea
voyage made a vow to walk barefoot to a shrine in
thanksgiving.
The ensuing frostbite
afflicted him for the rest of his life making the sedan chair his preferable method of
transport.
If you visit Pienza keep in mind as you sip a glass of local red wine and stroll
around this perfect Renaissance city that it was a local boy who gave us one of the
earliest first hand descriptions of Scotland, the land, its people, their strange habits and the fact that they have no wine to go with their oysters.
 |
| Entering Pienza's pedestrian zone |
“ Below the ground is found a sulphurous rock,
which they dig for fuel. The cities have no walls. The houses are usually
constructed without mortar; their roofs are covered with turf; and the country
doorways are closed with oxhides.
The common people, who are poor and rude,
stuff themselves with meat and fish, but eat bread as a luxury.
The men are
short and brave; the women fair, charming, and easily won.
Women there think
less of a kiss than in Italy of a touch of a hand.
They have no wine except
what they import. Their horses are small and natural trotters. They keep a few
for breeding and castrate the rest. They do not curry them with iron or comb
them with wooden combs or guide them with bridles.
The oysters are larger than
those in England and many pearls are found in them ".
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Have you been to Pienza? How have things changed in Scotland since Piccolomini's visit ?
