tuscany # 16 ~ the final destination point
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 09:04AM 
Val d'Orcia region of Tuscany • click to embiggenThanks to the wife's delightful screw up with our connecting flight reservations from Paris to Florence we had the pleasure of a wonderful day in Paris. The net effect on our travel plans was to delay our arrival in Florence from daylight hours to after dark.
As it turned out, this was good thing because (aside from our time in Paris), quite obviously, our drive down the Autostrada (A1) was accomplished in the dark thereby delaying the onset of my every-repeating question, "Where the hell is Tuscany?" The answer was always the same, "We're in Tuscany." To which my response was always the same, "No we're not. It doesn't look like Tuscany."
This little litany - remember, we were in Catholic Italy - was repeated endlessly (just ask the wife) for several days. This mini-drama finally got to the point were I had to proclaim that I was indeed having a good time despite the fact that I still wanted to know "where the hell is Tuscany".
Now, having been in the tourism marketing biz for a number of years, I should have been the first to realize that I was the victim of the marketing scheme known as Great Tourism Lie. One of the tenets of this scheme is to create a picture - or more commonly, a stream of variants on that one picture - of one small element of your "product" and use it endlessly to define the whole of your "product".
Say like, here in the Adirondacks - did you know that it never rains in the Adirondacks and everyday is a blue-sky sunny day?
Well, that said, what eventually became obvious to me was that I had fallen - hook, line, & sinker - for the notion that Tuscany was an endless landscape characterized by gentle, carefully-cultivated hills occasionally broken by gullies and by picturesque towns and villages. That notion was, of course, aided and abetted by - in fact, 100% attributable to - the ubiquitous Tuscan landscape picture much like the one pictured here.
The truth of the matter is rather different - not that I'm complaining dear (the wife), I had a great time - in as much as the scene depicted here is representative of a small region of Tuscany known as Val d'Orcia or Valdorcia.
Val d'Orcia was about 70-80 km away from where we stayed in Arezzo and I'm here to tell you, emphatically, that it is not a typical Tuscan landscape. It is, in fact, a quite unique Tuscan landscape. So unique that the entire Val d'Orcia region is listed (since 2004) as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We did not "discover" Val d'Orcia until last Thursday and only then because I purchased a few "typical" Tuscan landscape postcards, showed them to our il Bacio hosts, and asked "Where the hell is this Tuscany?" (by this time I had refined my question to include the word "this" because I had reluctantly accepted the fact that we were, indeed, in [the real?] Tuscany.) We were instructed to head south toward the town of Pienza if we wanted to see "that kind of thing".
So we did and now I can say that I've been to Tuscany. And, I got a number of "typical" Tuscan landscape pictures, almost all of which (like this one) were made from the back balcony of Pope Pius II's (1458-1464) summer villa in the hilltop town of Pienza.
Reader Comments (6)
You can not imagine what it is like to travel with someone whose job includes promoting pretty pictures of a tourist destination, who is repeatedly, insistantly objecting that the place we are in DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THE IDEA HE GOT FROM LOOKING AT PICTURES PROMOTED BY THE TOURISM COUNCIL. Perhaps it would have been helpful if they had those little Kodak signs showing good spots to take a photo, like they do at amusement parks and such.
In truth, Gravitas' reaction was so funny, it was hard to be as annoyed as I should have been. And he kept getting distracted by the cars.
I can sympathize with your situation fully. Several years ago I made a trip to see the "hoodoo" rock formations in the southern Alberta region. From all the pictures I had seen of the area I was under the impression their was this expansive area of hoodoo formations.I pulled up to the end of the road to a little sign that stated I had arrived at the hoodoo area and proceeded to turn around and around trying to find an area which had to be larger than what was before me, but no the actual site was really only about 100 yards square. I was incredulous, and felt in a way betrayed.(My wife also had to endure my endless statements of incredulousness re this) This experience eventually led me to reflect on my own underlying rationale for my landscape photography. I had a relatively romanticized body of work, isolating out all that was not supportive of beauty in the frame or lent a discordant note to the composition.I pursued this quest for beauty as I felt our world was ugly enough and to support the stuff that nourishes our souls I should "focus on the positive". I still often pursue this type of photo as I feel it has its place,but I now find myself more and more showing context for scenes. That the small slice of beauty is amongst an environment not quite so.It answers my souls yearnings in a different way it does not supply that surge of joy of viewing "beauty". Rather it allows for a feeling of hopeful appreciation for the presence,possibility of and the sustainment of beauty despite a surrounding context not so much so. For me this is a metaphor for life and how you view it and choose how to appreciate what it chooses to give you.
I very much enjoy your site and appreciate the dialogue regarding "truth and beauty".
my personal scar in this respect happened at Lake Louise, in Banff, Canada. Wasn't until I got there that I realised every photograph (and I mean every photograph) is taken from one spot, facing in one direction. If you look any where else, it doesn't look like 'Lake Louise' The monstrous, Vegas style hotel build right at the lake edge doesn't help to enhance the feel.
The surrounding area is beautiful and all, but the postcards/ photographs are a extreme distortion.
Learned a useful lesson that day. Served me well when I went to Tuscany a few years ago.
And Vermont is nothing but quaint villages and pristine white farmhouse with post and beam 100 year old barns, with dairy cattle on the hillside in the blinding fall colors...
Hehe, had the same experience when I first visited Porto, a lovely picturesque place on Corsica's western coast, sporting an old watch tower from the time when Corsica belonged to Pisa. Just as Gordon's experience: Restaurants, a camping site, bus parks, just not in that one single view that is on all published pictures :)
Oh, by the way, that's a wonderfully elegant image :)