Montepulciano

Montepulciano is only 8 km from Pienza. What you see from the tower of the communal palace is an ancient world which seems to have no borders. But too much air is dazzling and the wind takes your breath away. Everywhere landscapes can be charming and enchanting, but in Tuscia we are used to a smaller, more human size: maybe in order to allow thoughts to leap higher, to imagine the true infinity. So we come down from the tower, we go out on the square and onto the streets. The first impression is of the beauty of the full Renaissance, so taken with itself, so sure of its everlastingness. The pillar is in memory of year 1511, when Montepulciano returned to Florentine rule, after 16 years under Siena, and the citizens began to have their buildings made by the best architects. Thus the works by Vignola, Ammannati, San Gallo.
 
Thus the great San Biagio, overlooking a steep slope. Built between 1518 and 1545, outside the walls, it became the expression of a population still forced to live, for security reasons, within the fortifications, but already capable of dominating the space around it and of living it with a new sense of liberty. A series of Etruscan findings walled on either side of Palazzo Bucelli reminds us of the Etruscan origins of Montepulciano, founded, not by chance, by that same Porsenna who gave birth also to our Proceno.