Asciano

If fortune could be measured by the number of postcards and advertisements using a certain spot as a background, the area of clay hills around Asciano would certainly take pride of place. There is no photographer, film-amateur or wandering artist who has not been intrigued, at least once, by the erosion furrows and Jura limestone, the sunny but tremendous splendour of the "Crete". Haughty, their colour changing from violet to gold according to the seasons, these rolling hills are enlivened here by the decorous elegance of the farmhouses perched on their bare ridges, and there by the russet bricks of the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, the true spiritual centre of this Sienese land both civilized and wild. A place in which art (the great cloister frescoed by Il Sodoma and Signorelli, the peerless inlaid choir-stalls by Giovanni da Verona) and faith come together suggestively as in few other places...