The Piazza delle Sorgenti is one of the most unusual public spaces in Italy: where other medieval villages have a fountain or a church as the centrepiece of their piazza, Bagno Vignoni has a large Renaissance-era thermal pool. The rectangular basin, enclosed by stone walls and loggia, fills with water that rises from underground at around 52°C and smells faintly of sulphur. Steam drifts from the surface in cool weather, giving the village its characteristic dreamlike quality — Andrei Tarkovsky filmed here for a reason.
You cannot swim in the pool, which has been protected as a monument since the 1980s. But you can walk around it, sit on the walls, and look out from the village across the Val d'Orcia below. The pool is at its best in early morning or evening, when the light is low and the steam thickens. At any time, standing here is to understand that some places have a quality that defies explanation.