BEYOND THE BIG TWO
Monteriggioni & Volterra: Tuscany's Quieter Hill Towns
Two smaller Tuscan hill towns worth knowing — a walled circle Dante compared to giants, and an Etruscan hilltop famed for alabaster carving and views.
See Tuscany day trips on GetYourGuide ↗Monteriggioni — the perfect walled circle
Monteriggioni is tiny, almost absurdly so, and that's the point: it was built by the Republic of Siena between roughly 1213 and 1219 as a fortified outpost guarding the northern approach against Florence, and its near-complete ring of walls, punctuated by towers, is still largely intact today. Seen from the road below, the walled town sits on its hill like a stone crown — a shape so distinctive it's one of the most photographed sights on the drive between Florence and Siena, even though most tours only pause briefly rather than stopping to explore inside.
Dante's giants and the tower count
Monteriggioni earned a lasting literary mention from Dante Alighieri, who in the Inferno compared the ring of giants he sees looming around the edge of the abyss to the towers ringing Monteriggioni's walls — a striking image the poet clearly expected his readers to recognise. The town was originally built with around 14 towers along its circuit; several are still standing today, though not all remain at their original height, giving the walls their slightly irregular, weathered silhouette when seen up close rather than the uniform ring visible from a distance.
Inside the walls today
Step through one of Monteriggioni's gates and the fortress opens into a small, peaceful village square, home to a handful of shops, cafés, and a Romanesque church rather than the crowds of San Gimignano. It's easily walked in under an hour, and a section of the walls is generally open to climb for a walk along the ramparts with views over the Chianti countryside. Because so many day tours only stop for photos from outside, visitors who make time to actually go in are usually rewarded with a much quieter experience than Tuscany's better-known hill towns.
Volterra — Etruscan roots and alabaster
Perched higher and more remote than most Tuscan hill towns, Volterra was an important Etruscan settlement long before Rome rose to power, and its Etruscan-era walls, gate (the Porta all'Arco, with worn stone heads set into its arch), and archaeological museum give it a depth of history that predates most of Tuscany's medieval towns by close to a thousand years. Volterra later flourished as a Roman town — its well-preserved Roman theatre is one of the region's best — before becoming a fortified medieval commune in its own right, layering three distinct eras of history into one compact hilltop.
A craft tradition and a screen cameo
Volterra has been a centre of alabaster carving for centuries, and workshops around town still shape the soft, translucent local stone into bowls, lamps, and sculpture — a craft tradition with genuinely ancient roots, since Etruscan artisans carved alabaster funerary urns here more than two thousand years ago. The town also lent its name and imagined atmosphere to the vampire coven's city in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels, though the film adaptation's Volterra scenes were shot elsewhere in Tuscany — worth knowing if you're visiting hoping to spot a specific film location rather than the town that inspired it.