Bagno Vignoni

Most villages are built around a square; Bagno Vignoni is built around a pool. At the heart of this tiny hamlet in southern Tuscany, where a market place would normally be, lies a large rectangular basin of steaming thermal water, enclosed by old stone houses, with the church of St John the Baptist close by. The tank dates from the 16th century and holds the original spring, which rises from a volcanic aquifer beneath the hill; the space is called the Piazza delle Sorgenti, the Square of the Springs.

The waters have been used since antiquity: Etruscan and Roman finds in the area show their early fame, and the village's position close to the Via Francigena, the great medieval pilgrim road to Rome, kept a stream of travellers passing by. Among the notable guests remembered here are Saint Catherine of Siena, Pope Pius II — the humanist pope who rebuilt nearby Pienza — and Lorenzo de' Medici. The pool is still known as the Baths of St Catherine. Below the village, the overflow runs down a steep slope to the Parco dei Mulini, where four medieval mills were carved into the rock; because the warm spring never ran dry, they could keep grinding in summer, when the river mills of the area fell idle.

The setting has drawn film-makers as well. Andrei Tarkovsky shot many scenes of Nostalghia here in 1982; the film shared the Grand Prix du cinéma de création at Cannes the following year. The hamlet belongs to the municipality of San Quirico d'Orcia and lies on a hill above the Val d'Orcia, the landscape of gently cultivated hills that was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004.

Getting there

Bagno Vignoni is about 5.5 km south of San Quirico d'Orcia and about 13 km from Pienza. The nearest city is Siena, about 40 km to the north in a straight line (roughly 50 km by road). The nearest airport is Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), about 93 km away.