La Foce

La Foce is a place Carol always wanted to visit.  Until today, we never had made it there.

La Foce is the southern-most point on the map

Today’s ride was 54 km with 1,109 m of climbing (more than a kilometer!).  For the cyclists among you, that included two Cat 3 and one Cat 4 climb.

The story of La Foce is the story of Iris Origo.

Iris Origo was born to a wealthy Long Island family in 1900.  She was raised in a former Medici villa outside Firenze.  She married the son of a prominent Roman banker, and together they bought a barren estate just outside Montepulciano...La Foce.

The entrance to the estate

  

  They completely rebuilt their house.  They rebuilt the houses of their impoverished tenant farmers, built a health clinic and a school where there had been none.  The land had been over-farmed for centuries.  The soil was so poor, the tenant farmers could barely scratch out a subsistence living.  Using modern soil conservation techniques, they restored the land to productivity.

During WW II, they secretly aided the partisans, and hid downed Allied airmen.  In the two decades after the war, many of the tenant farmers joined the leftist political parties or moved to the cities to find work.  The wheels came off the tenant farming system all over Italy.  La Foce was no exception.

However, La Foce kept its world-famous formal gardens.

Carol at the gardens

Iris Origo’s grand-daughter now runs the estate as an upscale Bed and Breakfast.

    

Telling the La Foe story to a pair of Canadian cyclists.

And the view from the B&B isn’t too shabby.