Looking at the present-day landscape, it is hard to fathom that some 500 years ago, this valley was covered by an immense lake. The only remnants of that lake are the two small lakes of Chiusi and Montepulciano towards the southern end of the valley, both dwarfed by the nearby Lago Trasimeno, whose very name echoes Hannibal the Carthaginian, whose troopsarmy ambushed and destroyed a Roman army in 217 B.C. The large lake that characterised the Val di Chiana in the Middle Ages was immortalised in a map drawn by Leonardo da Vinci around 1502. Towns and villages on the hills on either side of the lake could only communicate by means of a ford at Valiano, a small village that still in existence.