The Cypresses of San Quirico d'Orcia

A tight, dense copse of cypresses on a Tuscan hillside has become one of the most photographed sights in Italy, and almost nobody who photographs it knows its name. Drivers on the SS2, the old Via Cassia between Siena and Rome, slow for the pullout at kilometre 189 because the copse sits exactly where the road curves past it, framed against the Val d'Orcia's bare clay hills, and stop to take the picture everyone else has already taken. A second grove, arranged in two facing semicircles, stands 200 metres further on; together the two hold a listing on Italy's own monumental-tree register, one of 2,407 trees the state protects nationwide and one of 55 in Tuscany. The tallest reaches 15 metres, the average trunk a modest 64 centimetres round. Nobody has dated them. Cypresses this size in this region are usually reckoned in the low hundreds of years by growth rate alone, but no dendrochronology or planting record exists for this particular stand, so the honest answer is that its age is simply unknown. The land underneath is a working farm, Podere Casaltina, and the trees are not fenced off from it. Nothing stops anyone walking the short dirt track up from the road for a closer look, which is most of what a visit here actually is.