"The sanguine town of Montepulciano stretches and winds as though it were following a river but it climbs a long ridge instead. Henry James's impression, a view caught between arcades, was of "some big battered, blistered, overladen, over-masted ship, swimming in a violet seas." Tuscan hill towns often give one the sense of an immense ship sailing above a plain.
On the roof across from Sant'Agostino, an iron pulcinells has hit the clock with his hammer to mark all the hours since the 1600s. I stop to buy candles in a small shop. There, among the potholders, key rings, mats, and corkscrews, I find a dim opening into an Etruscan tomb! "Oh yes," the owner says as he flicks on spotlights, "many store owners find these surprises when they renovate." He leads us over to a glass-covered opening in the from of the shop and points. We look down into a deep cistern hollowed from stone. He shrugs, "The roof drained here so they always had water."
"When?" Ed asks.
The owner lights a cigarette and blows smoke against the window. "The middle ages, possibly earlier." We're always amazed by how casually Italians accept their coexistence with such remains of the past.
The street up to the centro storico, historic center, jogs off the main shopping street so that the piazza is somewhat removed from the bustle of daily shopping. The unfinished front of the massive church adds to the abandoned feeling. A sheepdog on the steps is the most alert being in the piazza. We don't go in this time, but, walking by, I imagine inside the polyptych altarpiece by Taddeo di Bartolo, where Mary is dying in one panel, then surrounded by lovely angels while being swooped into heaven, with apostles weeping down on earth. White plastic caffe chairs lean onto their tables in one corner of the piazza. We have the whole grand, majestic square to ourselves. We look down into the bottomless well, presided over by two stone lions and two griffins. It must have been a pleasure to shoulder your jug and go the town well to meet your friends and haul up pure water.
In the fine palazzi, several vineyards have tasting rooms. Inside Poliziano's, there's a portrait of the Renaissance poet for whom this distinguished vineyard is named. The woman who pours liberal tastes highly recommends two of their reserve wines and she is right. Three of their wines are named for poems of Poliziano's: Le Stanze, Ambrae, and Elegia. Stanzas and Elegy we understand, but what does the white wine's name, "umbrae," mean? She pauses then shakes her head. Finally, she waves her hands, smiles, "Solo umbrae, umbrae." She gestures everywhere. Ambiance is my best guess. We buy several reserve and poet's wines.
As a poet, Poliziano made it big in Montpulciano. A bar on the main street is named for him, too, though the decor is strictly nineteenth century instead of the poet's period. Beyond the curbed marble bar are two rooms of dark wood and William Morris-style wallpaper with matching upholstered banquettes and proper little round tables, a Victorian tearoom Italian style. Both rooms open onto the view, framed by flower-filled iron balconies. We have a sandwich and coffee then hurry to the car. The day is slipping away. I stop for a quick look at a church interior I remember, the Chiesa del Gesu, with its small trompe l'oeil dome painted to look like an encircling stair rail around another dome. The perspective only makes sense to the eye from the center of the from entrance. From any other, it goes wonky.
The flower nursery takes its name from the massive church, San Biagio, which we skirt quickly in our rush to buy plumbago before closing. San Biagio is one of my favorite buildings in the world for its position at the end of a cypress-lined drive, and for it's golden stones, which radiate in the afternoon sun, casting a soft flush on the faces of the looking at the austere planes of the building. If you sit on one of the ledges around the base, the light pours over you, while also seeming to seep into your back from the walls. A walk around the building, inside the warm halo surrounding it, gives me a sense of well-being. As we wind around San Biagio on the road going down, we see the church from changing angles. "
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