Piccolo Hotel La Valle, Pienza, Tuscany, Italy

Piccolo Hotel La Valle, Pienza

The Piccolo Hotel La Valle, Pienza - lying just a stroll away from the centre of town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this Pienza hotel gazes out onto the beautiful surrounding countryside. From here there is a superb panorama down onto the Val d'Orcia, surely one of the most lovely valleys in Italy. Many of the bedrooms have balconies, offering similarly idyllic views, and the hotel offers bicycle hire, so you can really get out and enjoy this lovely part of Tuscany. The hotel has WiFi internet access, free for guests.

Pienza is a paradox - with a cathedral (il duomo), a Palazzo Borgia and other grand civic buildings, and yet this 'city' has a population of just 2500 people. It was a hugely costly vanity project for Pope Pius II who, back in the mid 1400s, decided to rebuild his home town of Corsignano, a lawless quarter of southern Tuscany, as a the perfect Renaissance new town. So he drafted in the finest builders, including the great Bernardo Rossellino from Florence, to create what has been described as 'the touchstone of Renaissance urbanism'.

Pius was the scion of an exiled Siena dynasty, one of 18 siblings, and he desired a grand retreat from Rome. And though Pienza never gained the grandeur Pius intended, never spreading much beyond the original town plan, and even today numbering no more than 2500 inhabitants, it would become a template for the humanist urban architecture that would influence town planning though Italy and Europe. You are in the perfect place to view this extraordinary and rather lovely experiment. And your Pienza hotel gives you the perfect starting point for exploring the beautiful region of Tuscany.

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Double room from €105