Green Interlude Pienza Tuscany

Firmly on the tourist trail in Tuscany, Italy, sits the lovely town of Pienza, a place full of historic buildings and glorious traditional architecture.

Within the town these terraces of houses and apartments do not have gardens so traditionally residents put ornate terracotta pots with plants siting on the herringbone flagstones by the front doors of their house or up on their balcony. This is a typical picturesque street in Pienza that leads down to a junction and on the corner is a pretty restaurant. You can see a pink bicycle parked by the entrance to the restaurant and the greenery behind it marks the boundary of the outside terrace with seating area.

One of my habits when taking photographs in busy towns like this is to choose times of day when tourists are not yet very active (early morning mainly). I also have a system of every time I meet a group of people making photography impossible I turn off either left or right and go exploring there. That is how I found this street, by a circuitous route around the parts of Pienza that tourists don't normally see.