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Updated: May 22, 2025
Those who have a day to spare at Montepulciano can scarcely spend it better than in an excursion to Pienza and San Quirico. Leaving the city by the road which takes a westerly direction, the first object of interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau immediately beneath the ancient acropolis.
A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata darkened with rain clouds. Still the pictures, which formed themselves at intervals, as we wound along these barren ridges, were very fair to look upon, especially one, not far from S. Quirico. It had for foreground a stretch of tilth olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and cypresses.
And then there are the cities, placed each upon a point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her spreading throne; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft against the vaporous sky; San Quirico, nestling in pastoral tranquillity; Pienza, where Æneas Sylvius built palaces and called his birthplace after his own Papal name.
Eden was there; and the four rivers of Paradise are the Seine, the Oise, the Thames, and the Arun; there are grasses there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an unnoticed pleasure. The waters brim up to the edges of the fields. But for this bare Tuscany I was never made. How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely how much farther San Quirico, the neighbouring town, might be.
The English girl was astonished at not finding her husband, and looked for him in all directions. I noticed her, and asked the landlord what had become of him. He informed us that he had breakfasted and baited his horse, and had then gone on, leaving word that he would await us at St. Quirico and order supper there. I thought it all very strange, but I said nothing.
Quirico, and the so-called Comte de l'Etoile came out and welcomed his wife in the most loving fashion, kissing her before everybody, no doubt with the object of giving people to understand that she was his wife, and I her father.
It was very pleasant to see the ancient warlike rampart thus overcome with rustic peace. The ruined gateway is partly overgrown with ivy. Returning to our inn, along the street, we saw sketching one of the doors of the Gothic church, in the midst of a crowd of the good people of San Quirico, who made no scruple to look over her shoulder, pressing so closely as hardly to allow her elbow-room.
It so chanced that a band of sunlight, escaping from filmy clouds, touched this picture with silvery greys and soft greens a suffusion of vaporous radiance, which made it for one moment a Claude landscape. S. Quirico was keeping festa. The streets were crowded with healthy handsome men and women from the contado.
Then it changed again for the better, the road leading us through a fertility of vines and olives, after which the dreary and barren hills came back again, and formed our prospect throughout most of the day. We stopped for our dejeuner a la fourchette at a little old town called San Quirico, which we entered through a ruined gateway, the town being entirely surrounded by its ancient wall.
A church that could wake interest stood at the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for the first time I saw in procession one of those confraternities which in Italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their heads, with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of San Quirico, and they to me.
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