In every corner of Volterra reveals his attitude to the ancestral nobility.
Volterra in splendor ….
The compact and charm as the medieval mystery Etruscan heritage.
Volterra, ancient in its every detail and surrounded by century walls, there is almost suspended between the Val di Cecina and Era Valleys, to dominate the Metalliferous Hills for a great distance, it is a link between Pisan and Sienese territory, but at the same time perched in complete solitude.
A place that the more surprising when you think about the past of the city, to his starring role in the Etruscan civilization, as in the Middle Ages. On the surrounding hills, made mostly of sand and clay, erosion gullies and has designed "biancane" domes of white sodium sulfate, which is deposited to separate the cream: a fascinating landscape but troubled, that only later dissolves into cultivated hills grain or gives way to woodlands.
Already near the walls of the chasm opens Cliffs of ocher, which once swallowed cemeteries and suburbs; seen from the west the town seems to rest in a miraculous balance on the hill instead of rooting it, and at the bottom of this too is a mystery, almost as much as pages of the season Etruscan unknown to us.
The glorious Velathri, who was one of the twelve lucumonies commercial and extended its influence over much of the Upper Tyrrhenian Sea, as there was still everywhere in the compact medieval city survives in the acropolis of Piano di Castello, as well as the remains of the walls of the IV century, which was originally developed for seven miles, enclosing a true metropolis, the three stone heads that adorn the door in the tower and the Arc truncated pyramid Porta Diana.
And especially in the Etruscan Museum Guarnacci, where the findings of Velathri are also those of prehistoric and Roman, in an exhibition of about forty rooms. Here met, inter alia, the existing rich collection of Etruscan urns, with about six hundred pieces of tufa, alabaster and clay (the "stone of light" that is still the raw material of the most flourishing handicrafts): a parade in their surveys parade of faces fascinating mystery, of gods and heroes.
Among the pieces on display are thousands of masterpieces such as the Stele of Avile Tite, Head Lorenzini, the Urn of the groom or the bronze votive statuette that D’Annunzio dubbed "Evening Shadow": the figure of a teenager, almost a child, stretching thin, stylized with surprising modernity.
A sculpture that could belong to many times, and not surprisingly is among the most beloved symbols of Volterra. If the Guarnacci Museum is the historical memory of the "old city", the artistic life since the Middle Ages is told in the Pinacoteca Civica di Palazzo Minucci Solaini, among paintings by Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli Daniele da Volterra and there is also a magnificent Deposition Rosso Fiorentino, who recently returned from view after restoration.
Another work of Rosso (The Wheel of Villamagna) is the Bishop’s Palace, in the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, which alternates with the creations of precious reliquaries Tino Camaino, Mino da Fiesole and Giambologna. As in museums, even in the city streets and squares is expressed by indelible images: the walls, punctuated by nine doors seem to open on time than on a physical space, the vertical thrust of the tower-house and the portal of San Buonparenti Michael the Archangel, the shape of the massive Fortezza, the wonderful frescoes of the Gothic church of St. Francis or the ruins of the Roman Theatre, on the hillside of Vallebona. At the top of every real or ideal path is Piazza dei Priori, where the gray stone "bench" gives form to one of the most consistent scenarios created by the communal civilization in Italy. And of course the magnificent Palazzo dei Priori is the dominant presence here with the Praetorian Palace tower called "the Pig" because of the small boar stone that decorates the prospectus. These noble buildings are secular counterpoint the Baptistery and the Duomo, the jewels of Romanesque Pisan that face each other in Piazza San Giovanni, cross the threshold means see a font by Andrea Sansovino and a wooden Deposition which is among the most beautiful sculptures of the thirteenth century Tuscany. The two squares are the monumental center of gravity of Volterra, the places that most atavistic reveal his attitude to the nobility, but all over the solidity of the stone is married to subtle allure of mystery, as if time and space they had joined forces to create a game of Chinese boxes: in the alleys of the old town as in the sumptuous rooms of the Palazzo Incontri-Viti, where Visconti shot a few scenes of his movie stars of the Vague. Chemistry of this unique city and its ancient soul, which goes beyond the concrete as well as light filters through the alabaster. Eleanor Tiliacos,