The history of Pienza is closely linked to its founder: Pope Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini. A refined humanist and distinguished scholar, he first embarked on a diplomatic career and then moved on to the ecclesiastical one and, having become Pope, he wanted a city to rise in the place of his birth, an expression of his thought and whose name would recall his papacy. Piccolomini didn’t want just any city but an urban center consistent with the humanist thought that was gaining momentum in those decades; he made sure that famous architects and avant-garde artists worked on a project in which the constructive and philosophical canons of an age that would amaze the world were implicit: the Italian Renaissance. In just three years, from 1459 to 1462, Pienza arose, the city of the Author, the Ideal city, the Utopian city.