It's amazingly preserved.

The town is about a thousand years old and the buildings we see today easily date back

to the Middle Ages and the earliest foundations of Volterra go back to the Etruscan days,

nearly 3000 years ago.

There was an Etruscan town here and it was one of the main dozen Etruscan towns in what

is today Tuscany and eventually was conquered by ancient Rome.

That was about 300 BC and the Romans ruled for that era until about 500 A.D. and then

comes the Middle Ages, and later occupation by Florence.

Back in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, 1400s, there was a lot of rivalry between

the city states, and Volterra was actually an autonomous city, state.

It has a marvelous wall around it, which is beautifully preserved today.

It goes for about 3 miles all around the city, preserving the stone historical gem intact.

It's mostly pedestrian zone when you're in the old town.

The residents live in the old town and they all work here.

It's a great tourist center, and yet it's a little bit off the beaten track of tourists.

You can't get here by train.

You can get here by bus, so it's so for example about a two-hour bus ride away from Florence

– direct buses maybe five times a day.

So it's certainly feasible if you are staying in Florence for a couple of days or in Siena,

you can get over the Volterra, and you would really be delighted to see how beautiful this

town is.

And of course there's a whole bunch of restaurants, there's pizzerias, snack shops, coffee shops,

lots of little stores.

One of their specialties here is alabaster, and earlier they had a lot of alabaster mines

which are actually still in operation today.

And the shops sell this very fine thin white stone alabaster, and they make plates out

of it and bowls, lampshades, little figurines.

Earlier in the history of Volterra a different mineral was important.

It was alum, A-L-U-M alum, and that was used for setting the die in textiles.

That was very important in Florence, which was a great textile center and one of the

reasons why Florence under the Medici wanted to control Volterra, and so they did, they

conquered it.

Lorenzo the Magnificent sent the Duke of Urbino over here with his troops and massacred some

civilians in Volterra and subdued them, and then paid them a little pittance as a reward

to keep them in line and for several hundred years, Florence dominated Volterra.

There's a handful of very charming small hotels within the walls of Volterra in the old town.

We're staying at one called La Locanda, it is quite nice, and there are three or four

other significant hotels and then some tiny ones and some bed-and-breakfasts, pensiones,

so you can find places to stay.

If you are here during the busy season, of course, you want to be sure to make reservations.

We are here in the off-season, it's November, which is really a lovely time to be traveling

in Italy.

Temperatures are nice and there are very few tourists around.

Most attractions are open, some are closed, some restaurants are closed, and attractions

to have somewhat limited hours, but November is wonderful to be here.

The availability of hotel rooms is no problem.

You can get a table in a good restaurant without worrying, and you don't see many crowd.

You have the town all to yourself, shared with the locals.

Volterra, put that on

your map.

We'll be taking a look at Volterra with a local guide, Annie, who is quite famous in

the area as one of the premier local tour guides in Volterra, and Annie is going to

be showing us the town.

Volterra is Tuscany's oldest continuously inhabited town.

That's why it's such a great place for history lovers, but it's also, it's also

a town that has a very vibrant local community.

It's not a big town, it's not a big city, it's more than a village.

But it's just, it's got so much going for it today as it did in past centuries.

Volterra has been inhabited since at least 1500 BC, that time when central Italy was

inhabited by a people called the Villanovans.

Later in the eighth century BC, they would be more or less replaced by the slightly more

famous Etruscans.

Now the Etruscans and Tuscans are not the same thing, but Tuscany doesn't get its name

from these ancient inhabitants of the region.

They were pre-Romans, although they do kind of develop together with Rome, but they're

doing some of the world's most magnificent gold jewelry.

Not to mention many other cultural productions at a time when Romulus and Remus were basically

being suckled by the she-wolf on the banks of the Tiber River.

And Volterra would become one the, one of the 12 Etruscan city-states and one of the

most powerful and populous.

By the fourth century BC, Etruscan Volterra counted a population of about 20,000 people,

which is astonishing, I mean it's larger than Rome for almost a century.

And it also means that Volterra in the Etruscan period had a lot more people in it than it

does today.

So today, we're officially 12,000 people, but that counts people like me who live in

the countryside, whereas in centuries past, they'd only count the people living inside

the city walls.

It would make Volterra today 5000 to 6000, compared to 20,000 back in the fourth century

BC.

This piazza that we' re in, Volterra's main square, is called Piazza dei Priori.

It has been the center of civic life, since as long as anyone can remember.

The oldest building in the square is the Tower of the Piglet, the Tore del Porcellino.

We don't know exactly when it was built, but we know when it was constructed it was

originally used as a residence for a private noble family, like so many of the house towers

built in Tuscan towns in that period.

So, San Gimignano, Volterra, Florence, Pisa, they all had house towers such as this.

What we do know is that in 1226, halfway through the construction of the town hall building,

the Palazzo dei Priori, the town government was so fed up with waiting for the construction

to finish, that they bought the tower from the family had previously owned it.

And it's in that tower that would hold their government meetings, until of course their

palace was completed.

Now, it's a mystery to us as to why there is a piglet up there.

Historians have investigated the old families that have owned, in the research, you know

what were their coats of arms?

What were their activities?

What were their names?

Is there some reason why we have a piglet up there.

And unfortunately there's no answer.

He is the, only thing I can suggest is maybe, at a time when farm raised meat was really

just for the wealthy and not for the average folks, perhaps it was a symbol of wealth.

The most important building in the square and the second oldest is the building behind

me, which is called the Palazzo dei Priori, the Priors Palace.

It was constructed between 1209 and 1257, and it has a very important claim to fame,

and that is that it's the oldest and the first building constructed for a city-state in Europe.

The architect of the Florence town hall, Arnolfo di Camdio, actually stated in his preparatory

notes that he intended Florence' s town hall to be a larger and more grandiose version

of the Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra.

The name, Priors Palace, tells us that the title given to the first rulers of the city-states,

they were called priors and they ruled with an oligarchy, and by no means was this pure

democracy, but the city-states really did represent an important first step towards

democracy in Europe..

Because it was no longer just the Holy Roman Empire or the Pope aand far off lands calling

the shots.

Now there was greater self and local rule.

The prior and his family actually would live inside the building you see.

It's where the town Council would meet.

It's where governance was was done, but also it was a private residence.

The prior actually would be sequestered inside the building for the entire duration of his

term.

The terms had to be short and because this was a term of suffering, suffering, and it

was usually 6 to 12 months.

During that period the prior was never allowed to leave the building.

Of course he had advisors to be his intermediaries with the outside world so he could actually

govern, but that the concern was corruption, bribery, conflict of interest.

Of course we surpassed all of this concerns today.

But they kept him inside the building and they would never leave him out, and would

never let him leave, and would never let anyone else in to try to avoid that corruption.

But of course this man is a Christian.

He may not be allied with the Pope, but he is still of course a Christian.

So how is he to continue his religious life jf he can't leave the building?

And they are not to leave, but the priests go up, either.

Well, the compromise was found by building the Palazzo dei Priori back-to-back with the

Cathedral.

So the black and white striping that you see is actually the backside of Volterra's Cathedral,

consecrated in 1120 by Pope Callistus II. and there's a wing of the Town Hall building

on the opposite side that actually goes on top of the Cathedral, so that from within

prior' s quarters he can open wooden shutters and have a clear view straight down onto the

altar of the Cathedral.

So from there he could kneel on a pew and attend mass, and many people would say, also

keep a very tight control on everything that was being said and done inside.

Here is the back entrance into the Cathedral.

You can see with the black and white striping that this is a holy building, and unlike the

other yellow stone buildings in the rest of the square, all of which are civic buildings.

If the door's open, you're welcome in.

Volterra' s Cathedral was consecrated by Pope Callistus II in 1120.

It's built in a very humble version of one of Europe's most magnificent architectural

styles, the Pisan Romanesque, which will be one of the most important foundation stones

to Renaissance architecture.

The Cathedral that we see today built at sometime before 1120, is not the first, but the third

version of the Cathedral here in Volterra.

Volterra was actually one of the first diocese in Christianity to ever be established, in

terms of its geographic limits.

Volterra is the birthplace of five popes, and the first of these five popes was quite

an influential figure.

He was Peter's successor; his name was Linus.

Not much is known about him, but it's widely believed that he gave Volterra such prominence

within the early Christian church.

And that would remain for many centuries.

On the façade of the Cathedral you can find some interesting details and including the

Carolingian floral motif along the cornices and also the wreath of pagan Roman stones

in the main portal, the main most important entrance into this most important Christian

building in town.

In fact, the white marble columns and capitals that you see on this main portal came from