Before it made a wine fit for popes, Montepulciano made its fortune in wool — and before that, in Etruscan stone. A walk up its main street is a walk through three thousand years.
Perched on a long limestone ridge in the province of Siena, Montepulciano is one of the most beautiful of all the Tuscan hill towns — and one of the oldest. Long before it lent its name to a legendary red wine, it was an Etruscan settlement, then a medieval power grown rich on trade, then a Renaissance showpiece rebuilt in honey-colored stone. To understand the wine, it helps to first understand the town.[1]
Etruscan bones
Montepulciano’s origins reach back to the Etruscans, the sophisticated pre-Roman civilization that dominated central Italy and were themselves great wine growers. The town sat in Etruscan territory as a center of commerce, and that ancient DNA — hilltop defensibility, a culture of the vine — never really left.[1]
Wool, war, and the shadow of two giants
In the Middle Ages Montepulciano became a free commune, and its wealth came not from wine but from wool and trade.[1] That prosperity made it a prize, and the town spent centuries caught between the two great powers of Tuscany — Siena and Florence — shifting allegiance and being fought over. It finally passed firmly into the Florentine orbit in the early 16th century, and in 1511 Florence set about remaking it.[1]
First wool, then war, then wine — the making of a Tuscan town.
A Renaissance in stone
Under Florentine rule, Montepulciano was rebuilt as a Renaissance ideal, drawing leading architects of the age. The great Antonio da Sangallo the Elder designed its most famous monument, the domed Temple of San Biagio just below the walls, while the noble palaces of the Piazza Grande gave the town the elegant profile visitors still climb to see.[1] That Renaissance beauty is why filmmakers keep returning — Montepulciano famously stood in for the fictional Volterra in a well-known vampire film.[1]
| Where | A limestone ridge in the province of Siena, Tuscany[1] |
|---|---|
| Origins | Etruscan, then a medieval free commune[1] |
| Medieval wealth | The wool and trade routes, not wine[1] |
| Turning point | Florentine rule and Renaissance rebuild from 1511[1] |
| Famous for | Its wine — Vino Nobile di Montepulciano[2] |
And, of course, the wine
Today the world knows Montepulciano above all for what grows around it: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, the “noble wine” that has been prized since the Renaissance and was among Italy’s very first DOCG wines. The ancient cellars beneath those Renaissance palaces are where it still ages — the town and its wine grown together, quite literally, over centuries.[2]
Seeing it for yourself
Montepulciano is one stop on a landscape thick with them — near the Renaissance ideal-town of Pienza and within reach of Siena and the Val d’Orcia. For the wider picture, read the history of Tuscan wine, and if you would rather walk these streets in person, our Italy wine tour goes to the source.
Related reading: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano · the history of Tuscan wine · Italy’s wine regions · the Wine History Timeline
Frequently asked questions
Is Montepulciano a town or a wine?
Both. Montepulciano is an ancient hill town in Tuscany. Its famous red wine, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, is named after the town and made from Sangiovese — not to be confused with the unrelated Montepulciano d’Abruzzo grape.
What is the town of Montepulciano known for besides wine?
Its Etruscan origins, its medieval wool-trade wealth, and its Renaissance architecture — especially the Temple of San Biagio by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and the palaces of the Piazza Grande.
Sources
- “Montepulciano” (Etruscan origins; medieval free commune enriched by the wool trade; contested between Siena and Florence; Florentine rule and Renaissance rebuilding from 1511; Antonio da Sangallo the Elder’s Temple of San Biagio; film locations), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montepulciano
- “Vino Nobile di Montepulciano” (the town’s celebrated Sangiovese-based red; among Italy’s first DOCG wines), Italian Wine Central. italianwinecentral.com
Want to read more?
Books we drew on and recommend for going deeper on wine history.
The World Atlas of WineHugh Johnson & Jancis Robinson
9000 Years of Wine: A World HistoryRod Phillips
Wine from Grape to GlassJens PrieweAs an Amazon Associate, Wine History Tours earns from qualifying purchases. This supports our research at no extra cost to you.
