I've visited several villages in Val d'Orcia WHS as recently as last year, but my favorite is Bagno Vignoni, which I visited in 1997.

This village is known in Italy today for its high-end spa, but it was also the main setting for the Russian cinematic giant Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece Nostalgia (1983).

Nostalgia was directed by Tarkovsky but was written by him and Tonino Guerra, perhaps the world's finest screen writer of his generation and one of the top Italian poets, who took Tarkovsky around Italy for location hunting for the movie.

This photo of the main square of the village, which is filled with water from a nearby hot spring, was taken by me 20 years ago and has been converted to a digital photo.

It was prohibited to get in the water when I was there, but people had supposedly gathered in the water to chitchat for centuries, as you can see in Nostalgia, just like they have been doing so at any other squares in Europe.

The water at the square was consequently used as a metaphor for human condition to a devastating effect in the movie.

Apparently, Val d'Orcia inspires artists even today.