Historic Centre of the City of Pienza
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How it came to be
Pienza was once the village of Corsignano, first mentioned in 9th-century documents. The humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini was born here in 1405 and was elected Pope Pius II in 1458. Returning in February 1459, he was struck by the poverty of the villagers and decided to rebuild his birthplace as a summer court, renaming it Pienza, the city of Pius.
The work went to the Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino, who had been influenced by Leon Battista Alberti in Rome, and began in 1459. Rossellino largely kept the medieval main street and set the cathedral, the Piccolomini Palace and the bishop's palace around the trapezoidal Piazza Pio II. The pope consecrated the cathedral on 29 August 1462, the year the town became a bishopric.
The Piccolomini Palace was modelled on the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence, and its three-storey loggia at the back looks over a garden to the Val d'Orcia. In 1463 the pope bought the old Palazzo Pretorio for Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and had houses built for the townspeople. The first town where humanist planning took shape was inscribed in 1996.
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