Tuscan Countryside Experience

The tuscan countryside tour from civitavecchia begins on the A1 motorway and ends, two hours later, on a gravel road between cypress trees with nothing on either side but the folds of the Val d'Orcia. Few landscapes in the world carry the weight of so many paintings and yet manage to exceed them; the tuscany shore excursion civitavecchia route brings you into the UNESCO-listed valley at the hour when the light is still low and the stone farmhouses cast long shadows across the wheat. By then, the port already feels like another country.

The val d'orcia cruise tour itinerary places Pienza at its centre: the Renaissance pope Pius II rebuilt his birthplace as a model city between 1459 and 1464, and what he created — three perfect facades around a trapezoidal piazza, a view from the bishop's garden that Zeffirelli used for The Taming of the Shrew — has barely been touched since. After Pienza, the road descends to Montalcino, where the Brunello vineyards begin. The afternoon includes a private tasting at a cantina of your choice, a lunch at an agriturismo where the bread still comes from a wood-fired oven, and a return drive through the golden hours that Tuscan light reserves for those who have earned it.

Val d'Orcia, Pienza, Montalcino

• Val d'Orcia — UNESCO landscape

  The Val d'Orcia was inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 as a cultural landscape that shaped Renaissance painting. Cypress avenues, hilltop farms and the soft geometry of ploughed fields — precisely as you have seen it in a hundred images, and better.

• Pienza — the perfect Renaissance town

  Built to order by a Renaissance pope who wanted to show the world what a city should look like, Pienza takes perhaps forty minutes to walk and a lifetime to forget. The local pecorino cheese, aged in walnut leaves or ash, is among the finest in Italy.

• Montalcino wine tasting, arranged in advance

  Brunello di Montalcino is among the most celebrated red wines in Italy. We arrange a private tasting at a cantina suited to your preferences — from intimate family producers to estates with panoramic cellars — before your booking is confirmed.