In 2009, the global success of Twilight: New Moon brought a small Tuscan hilltop town to the attention of millions of viewers around the world. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Edward Cullen (the saga’s beloved vampire protagonist and many teenage girls’ admired character at the time) steps into Volterra’s main square during a public celebration in an attempt to provoke the Volturi, the powerful ruling vampire coven in the book. Meanwhile, Bella races through the sun-drenched medieval streets to stop him, creating one of the most visually striking sequences in the entire series. Almost everyone who know the movie / book remembered probably both the scene and the place now, right?
In the film, the city is portrayed as Volterra, and the town’s historic architecture, winding alleyways, and atmospheric piazzas provide the perfect backdrop for this dramatic moment.
The twist. Volterra do exist but the scene was not filmed in Volterra. It was filmed in Montepulciano.
Why the production chose Montepulciano
The location scouts needed a town that looked unmistakably medieval, photogenic from every angle, and dramatic enough to carry the weight of the scene. Montepulciano was the perfect place for them sitting at 605 metres, ringed by Renaissance walls, its streets paved with the same dark stone they have used since the 14th century. The Piazza Grande, anchored by the Palazzo Comunale and open to a 360 degree panorama of the Val d’Orcia, doubled as the square where Bella races to stop Edward stepping into the sunlight. The Palazzo Comunale’s tower modelled closely on Florence’s Palazzo della Signoria, built by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo in the 15th century became the seat of the Volturi. The arched porticos, the medieval doorways, the long views at the end of every climbing street…
All of it is still there, unchanged, waiting to be recognised by anyone who has seen the film.
The Piazza Grande: one of the most beautiful squares in Tuscany
Even stripped of its cinematic association, the Piazza Grande earns its superlatives. It sits at the highest point of the ridge on which Montepulciano is built, and the four buildings that define it represent four centuries of Renaissance ambition compressed into a single space. The Palazzo Comunale occupies the west side with the authority of a minor Florentine government building which is essentially what it was designed to resemble, Montepulciano having spent much of the 15th century under Florentine dominion and eager to demonstrate it architecturally. The Palazzo Contucci on the opposite corner, begun by Antonio Sangallo the Elder in the early 16th century and completed over the following 200 years by a succession of architects who each left their mark, now houses one of the oldest continuously operating wineries in the region, its cellar descending directly beneath the piazza.
The Duomo di Montepulciano closes the east side with a deliberately unfinished brick façade — construction was halted in the 17th century and never resumed, leaving the building with an honesty unusual among Italian cathedrals. Inside, Taddeo di Bartolo’s monumental triptych of the Assumption, painted in 1401 and still occupying the entire apse, fills the space with gold and ultramarine blue that has barely dimmed in six centuries. It is one of the most important late Gothic altarpieces in central Italy and receives a fraction of the attention it deserves.
The Corso and the Etruscan foundations
The main street of Montepulciano is Via di Gracciano nel Corso which winds uphill through the full length of the town from the Porta al Prato to the Piazza Grande. It is lined with Renaissance palazzi commissioned by the town’s most powerful families during the 15th and 16th centuries in a sustained competition in stone that produced one of the most architecturally coherent streetscapes in Tuscany. Below the Renaissance surface, Etruscan foundations run under most of the old town. Montepulciano was originally an Etruscan settlement at least 700 years before the Romans arrived. The hill was chosen for the same reason every hill town in Tuscany was chosen: visibility in every direction, defensibility on every side, and the ability to see trouble coming long before it arrived.
The 13th century winery and the Etruscan tomb beneath it
The wine tasting on our tour takes place in a winery whose history compresses Montepulciano’s layered past into a single cellar. The building dates to the 13th century. Beneath the ageing room, accessible and visible during the visit, is a 2,000-year-old Etruscan tomb — a burial chamber from the civilisation that built this hilltop settlement centuries before Roman Tuscany existed. The juxtaposition is not a tourist gimmick. It is simply what this part of Italy is like: the past is structural, literal, physically present under your feet.
The wine itself is one of Italy’s historic DOCG reds. Made from Prugnolo Gentile, a local Sangiovese clone, it has been produced in this area since at least the 8th century, and the name “Nobile” appears in documents from 1787 when Francesco Redi, a Medici court poet, singled it out as the king of all Tuscan wines. It requires a minimum of two years ageing before release and in good vintages develops a complexity of dried cherry, iron, tobacco and earth that is immediately recognisable as Tuscan and immediately identifiable as something distinct from Chianti or Brunello.
For Twilight fans: what to expect on the ground
The Piazza Grande looks exactly as it did in the film. The tower is there. The porticos are there. The stone is the same colour in the same light. Walking those streets carries a genuine charge for anyone who grew up with the saga… and the town itself, entirely unconcerned with its cameo in vampire fiction, simply gets on with being one of the most beautiful hilltop towns in Italy.
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