In truth it's actually the vineyards that I'm more impressed by. Imagine the amount of work that would have gone into creating those. And most of it would have to have been by hand; there is no way that you could easily have a tractor that could negotiate those slopes.

Such mountainous areas extract a price, though, as we've seen all too often since the quakes that rocked central Italy (and flattened some towns) in August 2016. In this area, for example, (not necessarily right here) there were landslides in May 1983 (18 deaths) and November 2002 (widespread damage).