Montepulciano: Great Place to Visit, If You Can Figure Out How to Get There

A few weeks ago before Spring Break, I took a day-trip with some friends to see Montepulciano, the picturesque Italian town located at the top of a hill about an hour from Siena. Here’s what went wrong: we decided to go in the middle of a holiday weekend celebrating the 150^th Anniversary of Italy’s Unification and while there didn’t appear to be transportation problems in Siena, we got off the train in Montepulciano to find the station itself closed, taxi drivers on their break and the bus on a very limited schedule. It’s here that I should probably mention that the Montepulciano train station is 9km away, or about 5.5 miles from the actual city, which is again located at the top of a hill. We wandered around the little residential area near the station looking for something to be open so we might find out how to get up the hill, but after nearly an hour, our knight in shining blue amour arrived in the form of a SITA bus which took us to the station just outside the city’s walls.

The views on the ride up the winding streets and hillside toward Montepulciano are simply breathtaking. The town, now popular with teenage girls for being one of the filming locations for the movie Twilight: New Moon, is very tiny, with only one main commercial road and square. We stopped for a leisurely lunch upon arriving at the main square and we were treated to this unbelievable view while eating what were quite possibly the best tomatoes I’ve ever had in my life and sharing a bottle of the town’s world-renowned Vino Nobile wine.

Following lunch, it was time to do some exploring, which included a visit to the Santa Maria delle Grazie church and then over to see this palace not far from the church, which was sadly closed, but had this little playground in its semi-formal garden. There, we returned to our youths and went swinging for about twenty minutes.

Returning to the age of now, we slowly meandered our way down the hill toward the SITA station, popping in and out of little shops and gelaterias. Since this was after all the 150^th anniversary of Italy’s Unification, there were Italian-flag themed items everywhere. My personal favorites were the green, white and red pairs of shoes and the green, white and red painted bottles of wine that were arranged to look like they were arranged to look as if they made up one half of a double helix. I thought it was wonderful.

By the time we reached the main gate into Montepulciano, the sun was beginning to set and it was time for us to start making our way back to Siena. A quick stop off at the Conad to pick up snacks and then a short walk to the SITA station later, we were on our bus and all dozing off to sleep or reading after a long day. Fortunately, a kind lady on the bus who had heard us talking about getting back to Siena helped us realize that we were not actually changing buses at a station, but instead at a stop on the side of the road. Those were an interesting twenty minutes as we all stood there in the growing cold wondering if our bus would ever show up.

Montepulciano is one of those places you imagine all of Tuscany looks like; it has the views you see in movies, read about in books and about which you daydream. As with all picturesque places, getting there is never easy, but the payoff is more than well worth it.

John David Quate

CET Siena Student Correspondent, Spring '11