Up to 50 years ago scarcely a foreigner had set foot in this aloof little town on its tufa escarpment, where tiny rivulets spring from mossy clefts and flow east to the Tiber or west to the sea. The few who did found themselves in a place of tiny squares and alleyways, nooks and crannies which led them to splendid viewpoints and expired above a precipitous drop. The town is now popular as an archetype of the old undisturbed Tuscany. Its Medici heritage (it was under Florence’s rule) attracts architectural students. See the Palazzo Comunale on Piazza Grande with its medieval tower; the Iion-and-griffin fountain beside Palazzo Tarugi; and Palazzo Contucci, a cantina for the wine trade where you can taste and buy bottles of Montepulciano’s dark vino nobile. Tarugi was designed by the celebrated Vignola, Contucci by the more celebrated Sangallo the elder. Above the foundations of Palazzo Rucellai, where cinerary urns are built into the walls, are Latin and Etruscan inscriptions. On the hour, above the Torre di Pulcinella on Piazza Michelozzo, the white figure of Pulcinella the Commedia dell’ Arte clown strikes the town bell.

Palazzo Neri-Orselli on Via Ricci houses the civic museum. At the end of a cypress avenue under the town walls west of the town stands the huge Greek-cross church of San Biagio with a well in the grassy clearing. Its canonica (chanonry) is famous for its double loggia. Church and chanonry, both by Sangallo the elder, have been described as ‘the most harmonious creation of Renaissance Italy’ − a bold claim.