Tuscan Villages

There are big ones and little ones, well known ones and obscure ones, ones on hillsides, ones built on rocky escarpments and fortified ones.  Here is a list of the villages we visited in Tuscany.  Take your Blue Guide as it will be useful:

San Gimignano for its towers;

Pienza for its pretty location and pecorino cheese;

Montepulciano for its many boutiques and wine cellars with Etruscan ruins and the nearby Tiempo di San Badgio;

San Quirico d’Orcia because it has a great name and leads to the magnificent Val d’Orcia;

Cortona for its pretty location on top of a hill and because of the book, Under a Tuscan Sun, and the steep alleys;

San Casciano dei Bagni for its thermal baths;

Celle sul Rigo for its location and its pici (poor man’s spaghetti) and the flocks of sheep with tinkling bells around their necks;

Radicofani beacuse its stuck on top of a hill with unobstructed views in each direction, a medieval village right on a pilgrimage route;

Pitigliano because its built on a cliff;

Montelupo Fiorentino for its ceramics;

Siena for the campo, the cathedral and many other historic monuments and you can’t go to Tuscany without saying you visited Siena;

Monteriggioni because it is a well preserved fortified town;

Colle Val d’Elsa for its crystal; and,

San Giovanni for its thermal baths.