Vignoni bath

agno Vignoni is one of the most evocative and best preserved medieval villages in Tuscany. Located in the Val D'Orcia, immersed in a postcard landscape and world-famous vineyards, and part of the municipality of San Quirico d’Orcia in the province of Siena, is known around the world for term, whose activity dates back to Roman times.

Vignoni bath constitutes an urban singularity as the inns, the houses and the church of San Giovanni Battista have developed around the basin in which the waters of the original thermal spring flow from the volcanic soil. This conformation makes this basin assume the position and function that are normally typical of the main square of a town.

The waters that come out of the thermal bath go towards the steep escarpment of the Natural Park of the Mills; there are four medieval mills carved into the rock which were important for the local economy as the perennial thermal spring ensured their operation even in summer, when the other mills in the area were stopped due to dry rivers

At the center of the village is the “square of the sources”, a rectangular tub, of sixteenth-century origin, which contains a source of hot and steaming thermal water that comes out of the underground aquifer of volcanic origins. Since the time of the Etruscans and then the Romans – as evidenced by the numerous archaeological finds – the baths of Bagno Vignoni have been frequented by illustrious personalities, like Pope Pius II, Catherine of Siena, Lorenzo from’ Medici and many artists who had elected the village as a holiday home.

In 1982 the Soviet director Andrei Arsen'evič Tarkovskij, he has been in exile for some years in Tuscany, he set many scenes from the film Nostalghia in Bagno Vignoni, which the following year won the Grand Prix du cinéma de création at the Cannes Film Festival, ex æquo with French director Robert Bresson's L'Argent.

In “square of the sources” a scene from the film Al lupo al lupo by Carlo Verdone is set, in which the three brothers played by Francesca Neri, Sergio Rubini and Verdone himself bathe at night in the thermal waters. The film was released in 1992.

In 2014 some scenes of the film The most beautiful school in the world were shot with Christian De Sica and Rocco Papaleo.