A Night In Terrapille

When deciding on a place for your stay in Val d’Orcia, you might find the choice a little bit challenging. With gorgeous rolling hills and perfect, iconic cypress trees almost everywhere, the selection is very large and even reliable platforms such as Booking, Airbnb, or Trivago can’t help you much.

Fortunately, when the time to book my stay in Pienza (the epicenter of Val d’Orcia) came I was lucky enough to receive precious suggestions from a good friend of mine. “Look for Podere Terrapille,” he said, “That’s where Ridley Scott filmed the final scene of The Gladiator, and my stay was just perfect.”  So in a matter of minutes after his message, I was already on Google looking for the place and examining Terrapille’s website. I immediately called the phone number and a nice lady, named Lucia, picked up and informed me she had one last room available for the night I would be there. “Just send an email confirmation and you’ll be set!” About two weeks later I was in Pienza with a friend and Lucia greeted us kindly, provinding suggestions for places and restaurants in the area.

While short, our stay was beautiful and relaxing. The pool was an added bonus: swimming in front of a marvelous panorama on a late June afternoon made our stay special, and provided solace from the scorching early heat.

In the morning we woke up early to take some memorable photos of nearby gems, like Cappella di Vitaleta and the still empty historic center of Pienza. Lucia was kind enough to let us use the pool one last time and then we drove home. Definitely a suggested location!