The Val d'Orcia is the most photographed agricultural landscape in Italy and possibly in Europe. The photographs — the cypress alleys rising from bare clay slopes, the isolated farmhouse on a ridge against a grey and ochre sky, the road through green wheat fields in early May — have circulated so widely that the landscape has become slightly hostage to its own documentation.

San Miniato is known to most visitors as a white truffle town — its November Mostra Mercato del Tartufo Bianco draws chefs and collectors from across Europe, and the town's identity is substantially built around Tuber magnatum pico.