Today's excursion took us into the Val d'Orcia, one of the vast swathes of landscape that encircle Montepulciano. It is actually a World Heritage area, full of beauty, history, agricultural products that are specific and traditional (I.G.P and D.O.C.).
My photos just don't do it justice, but here you go:
Yeah, these photos are lame. All I can say is, when you are on the top of this hill that we climbed, it feels like you can see all the way to France. It's sweeping. One reason it is historically significant is that the Via Francigena goes through this valley. If you remember from my Viterbo days, the Via Francigena was a very important medieval pilgrimage route that began in England, sliced through France, and then through Italy all the way to Rome. It was the one that St. Francis took from Assisi to Rome when he wanted to ask permission to begin his own Order in the 13th century. But even before that it was an established "road," a pilgrimage route in which the faithful stopped at specific towns to rest and in some cases to view important churches and their relics.
One such city was San Quirico. San Quiricus and his mother Julitta, were early Christian martyrs. There are several versions of their martyrdom, documented and undocumented... you know how it goes. Here is one: Julitta and her son fled to Tarsus (in modern day Turkey) and were identified as Christians. Julitta was tortured. Quiricus had a fit and scratched and kicked the governor and thus was thrown down the stairs and died. Julitta was happy with this (??) because it meant her son had died a martyr. Her joy was short-lived (and so was she) as she was then ripped apart with hooks, beheaded, and her corpse thrown outside the city walls.
Oh dear. The church is very old and had interesting Norman and Baroque components:
And the relics on display, that medieval pilgrims would have appreciated:
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