CHAPTER LIV - CHIANCIANO AND MONTEPULCIANO

Summary

Relicquias veterumque vides monuments virorum.

Virgil

From Sarteano to Chianciano it is a drive of seven miles amid glorious scenery. This range of heights, indeed the whole district of Chiusi, is prodigal in charms—an earthly paradise. There are so many features of beauty, that those which are wanting are not missed. Here are hill and vale, rock and wood, towns and castles on picturesque heights, broad islet-studded lakes, and ranges of Alpine snow and sublimity ; and if the ocean be wanting, it has no unapt substitute in the vast vale or plain of Chiana—a sea of fertility and luxuriance; while all is warmed and enriched by the glowing sun of Italy, and canopied by a vault of that heavenly blue, that

Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro,

which reflects beauty on everything beneath it. It is the sort of scenery which wins rather than imposes, whose grandeur lies in its totality, not in particular features, where sublimity takes you not by storm, but retires into an element of the beautiful.

Chianciano, like Sarteano, stands on the brow of a hill, girt with corn, vines and olives—a proud site, lording it over the wide vale of the Chiana, and the twin lakes of Chiusi and Montepulciano. It is a neat town of about two thousand souls, and is much resorted to in summer, for the hot springs in its neighbourhood.