La Dolce Vita, the sleek new Orient Express train, has a route through Tuscany into Siena and on to Venice from Rome. Leaving the grandiose Ostiense station and the city suburbs behind, I’m soon gliding up the Tyrrhenian coast into the wildlands of Tuscany’s Maremma, past nameless, shuttered hill towns that rise above the plains.
On these wide-open spaces, worn as faded corduroy, the legendary broad-torsoed Maremmana horses gather, and the long-horned cattle of the region graze in the shade of the umbrella pines. To the west, a vast seascape rolls into the glare of the afternoon.
