In the cemetery chapel of this insignificant village, protected only by a frayed rope, hangs one of the most famous and enigmatic paintings of the Renaissance master Piero della Francesca. It is the Madonna del Parto (parto is ‘childbirth’) and when de Gaulle persuaded the mayor to let him borrow it for a Paris exhibition the women of Monterchi lay down in the road and refused to allow it to go. Like Anghiari a short distance away, this village had more than a footnote in the history of Italian independence: here, during his retreat from Rome in 1849, Garibaldi and his men achieved a midnight escape through the Austrian lines.