Two-and a-half words that, said aloud in a cocktail party, mean very little to much of the crowd. Show the same people a postcard with Tuscany written in Monotype Corsiva across the bottom and the room would probably fill with the more appropriate ooohs  and ahhhs befitting of a first glance at Val d’Orcia.

The moral of this storiella (little story, in Italian) is that what people imagine in their heads when you tell them about Tuscany, the pictures and paintings that immediately come to mind, is in fact, the landscape of Val d’Orcia- its rolling emerald hills swathed in golden light, the cypress trees reaching up to the heavens, and the perfectly-placed hilltop towns dotting the horizon. The valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its claims-to-fame include the towns of Pienza, Montepulciano, and Montalcino.