What a surprising town we have here in Montepulciano. Walking along the main Corso, many tiny shopfronts advertise wine-tasting, art, clothing and shoes for sale. Really most of them look too small to accommodate more than a handful of people, but, descend their stairways and twist and turn round some corners and you can suddenly find yourself several layers down in an Etruscan tomb.
Evidently there is a maze of these underground basements and tunnels in Montepulciano once connecting the palaces above. It does give the feeling of living on a giant anthill. Yesterday we explored the tunnels below the Pulciano wine cellar, descending past rows of wine barrels and looking through various holes in the levels to the well below; eventually we fetched up at an Etruscan tomb. And rather incredible it was, 30 feet or so below the wine cantina to look in on a cave scratched out of the stony earth and marvel at a structure made centuries before Christ.
We climbed the Palazzo Communale later in the day to take some pictures of the main square, the Piazza Grande. The view from the tower is marvellous, stretching away to Lake Trasimeno in the distance and the hazy mountains of Tuscany. It was blowing a gale up there, making me clutch on to the decrepit iron railing for support.
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