Hill town of Vino Nobile — Renaissance palaces rising above Val d'Orcia vineyards
Montepulciano is the highest hill town in Tuscany at 605m, its medieval and Renaissance streets climbing steeply to a piazza dominated by a noble cathedral and civic palaces built when the town competed with Florence and Siena for cultural supremacy. It is the home of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, one of Italy's three great DOCG red wines (alongside Barolo and Brunello), aged in centuries-old underground cantinas beneath the town. The surrounding Val d'Orcia is UNESCO-listed for its perfectly preserved Renaissance landscape.
Montepulciano was inhabited in the Bronze Age and became Etruscan; the Romans called it Mons Politianus. In the Renaissance the town hired Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and his nephew to build a series of palaces and churches in the Florentine style, giving it an architectural coherence unusual for a Tuscan hilltown. The wine Vino Nobile has been produced here since the 8th century, when it was prized enough to be sent as diplomatic gifts to popes and emperors. The town was birthplace of the Renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano, tutor to Lorenzo de' Medici's children.