Vivo d’Orcia is located on Mount Amiata and represents the highest village in the whole area, it is a typically mountain town with specific peculiarities and raw materials. At its highest point, near the Sources of Ermicciolo, flows the river Vivo, one of the main tributaries of the Orcia river which gives its name to the valley below Unesco Heritage, only a few kilometers away. The Ermicciolo sources are also an important water source for the Aqueducts of Val di Chiana and Siena. A place of great charm, Vivo d’Orcia has religious buildings dating back to the 11th Century. Upstream of the village there is a small hermitage named after San Benedetto. It belongs to the Monastero del Vivo, founded by St. Romualdo in the 11th Century and once inhabited by the Camaldolese monks, which is located further downstream. The two buildings are connected to each other by a path built along the river where it is possible to see traces of old industrial installations, such as paper and water mills, dating back to past centuries and now abandoned. READ MORE about The history of the “Water Village”

Studying these peculiarities and recreating historical settings with a great cultural content (such as the remaking of a lumberjacks hut, which served as a modest home during long periods of work away from home), visiting the sources and the historic buildings, walking in the woods up to places for visits and exhibitions, the possibility of identifying, collecting, tasting some of these products, up to the implementation of sensory and manual activities, is part of an ancient and primary knowledge, that we want to pass on and which – in our opinion – is the basis for harmonious development with Nature.