(A grim but spectacular grey hilltop Etruscan town with good mediaeval buildings and museums; needs two visits to do it justice.)

In pre-Roman days, Volterra was one of the biggest and richest Etruscan towns, and some of the old Etruscan walls are still visible in the country outside the present much smaller mediaeval town which grew up in the 12th and 13th centuries. There is, however, little sign now of the prosperous and busy countryside of Etruscan times. The mediaeval town remains largely intact. Perched on a craggy hilltop with vast views over bare grey hills or "creti", it is windswept and rainswept, often cool in summer and icy in winter. Its inhospitable position made it a good fortress in times past; Volterra maintained real independence until 1472, when it was finally sacked and taken by Florence (long after Siena had been subjugated). Maybe its position is also what decided the authorities in more modern times to put Tuscany's main prison and main lunatic asylum there.

Volterra's massive, austere, fortress like buildings all crowd in on each other, and both its two squares are rather cramped; there is none of the space and light and grace of its gayer neighbour, San Gimignano. But it has a sombre beauty, only slightly marred by the multiplicity of garish shops selling hideous alabaster objects to the tourists (Volterra's economy has long benefitted from nearby alabaster and salt mines). There are four museums and several churches to be seen; we suggest that you look perhaps at the rather overwhelming Etruscan Museum on one visit, and at the other smaller museums on another, with a couple of churches on each occasion.

Piazza dei Priori

The main square is entirely surrounded by mediaeval or pseudo--mediaeval buildings, the genuine ones all of roughly the same early 13th century period. The south-west side of the square is dominated by the Palazzo dei Priori, the oldest Town Hall in Italy, built between 1208 and 1257 (although the first floor windows have been altered and the top of the tower is 19th century). Next to it, the black and white stripy wall belongs to one of the transepts of the Duomo, and beyond that is the 14th century Palazzo Vescovile, the Bishop's Palace. On the left side, there is another old Palazzo (now the Cassa di Resparmio di Volterra). It was originally a seminary, and has been much modified since mediaeval times but still retains a general mediaeval look. Facing the Palazzo dei Priori are more 13th century buildings. On the left, with a crenellated tower, is an ancient prison; then the Palazzo del Podesta with an arcaded ground floor; and then the Palazzo Pretorio, the tower of which is known as the Torre del Porcellino from the small pig on a bracket to the right of the top window. The Palazzo on the right side of the Piazza is a modern copy of a mediaeval building, but looks almost more genuine than some of the older ones.

Duomo (Cathedral)

The Duomo is behind the Palazzo dei Priori, in its own little square. It dates from the 12th century, with a Romanesque Pisan-style blind arcade at the top of its facade (the elegant doorway was added later, in the 16th century). Inside, the Duomo was thoroughly done over in the 16th century, and not many Romanesque traces remain apart from the general basilica shape and the two rows of columns down the main aisle. The columns, which at first sight look like pink granite, are in fact painted stucco; there is also a magnificent painted ceiling. The general effect is of elegance and order. The pulpit was also built in the l6th century, but using 12th century panels: the Last supper on the front; Abraham sacrificing Isaac on the back; and the Annunciation on the side.

There are several good paintings and sculptures:

· in the south transept, to the right of the altar, is an extraordinary and moving life-size group in carved and painted wood of the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, which looks quite modern, with its stylized attitudes and long mournful faces, but in fact dates from 1228;

· on either side of the altar are two extremely beautiful stone angels kneeling on top of elaborate Gothic columns; they are by Mino da Fiesole (mid-15th century), who was also responsible for the carved tabernacle above the rather hideous 19th century altar;

· on the right of the altar is the Chapel of St Octavian (Ottaviano), a 6th century hermit who saved the city from the plague and thus became one of its patron saints. His bones - which have been in a church on this site since 850- are displayed in a glass casket;

· in the second chapel of the north transept is a fine painted wooden statue of a rather anxious-looking Madonna and Child by Francesco di Valdambrino (early 1400s);

· in the middle chapel on the north side of the aisle is a quite beautiful painting of the Annunciation attributed to Fra Bartolommeo (1497), with a spacious Tuscan landscape shining through the door in the middle;

· In the separate Lady Chapel at the west (ie door) end of the aisle are various 15th century terracotta figures, the best in the two niches - the Adoration of the Magi on the right and the Nativity on the left. The left hand niche is also decorated with delightful frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), the artist of the Palazzo Medici- Riccardi in Florence.

Outside the Duomo, pause to admire the 13th century octagonal baptistery, a simple building with a touch of Sienese black and white stripiness; the hospital of Santa Maria Maddalena with a Renaissance arcade; and the 15th century campanile of the Duomo.

Pinacoteca and Museo Civico

At No 1 via Sarti (out of the main square along via Ricciarelli and right down via Buonaparti). Open 9-13 and 15-18.30 daily.

It has a small but interesting collection of mostly Sienese and Florentine paintings, including a stirring mannerist masterpiece by Rosso Fiorentino.

Room 1 on the first floor has some 11-12th century capitals, including one of three animals eating an unfortunate man from several directions at once.

Room 2 has a small, damaged but beautiful painting of the Madonna and Child and a crucifix, both 14th century Sienese. Also a polychrome wooden statue of the Madonna and Child with lovely life-like faces, and a painting of Saints Giusto and Ugo (Just and Hugo), all of the same period. There are another couple of saints painted by Taddeo di Bartolo (1362-1422), but these are hack's works - note how St Nicholas of Tolentino with the designer stubble and St Peter with his key have identical faces - only the trimmings have been changed like a Barbie doll. There is a much better Taddeo di Bartolo in Room 3: a polyptych of the Madonna and Saints dating from 1411.

Nothing of interest in the little chapel or the next room, but Room 6 has a wonderfully lively and colourful polyptich by a Portuguese painter, Alvaro Pirez (active 1411-1434), quite different in style from the Italian paintings that we have been looking at. The saints are, from the left, St Nicholas the Bishop; St John the Baptist; St Christopher (note the fish at his feet caught up from his crossing of the river), and St Michael (with a particularly tiny dragon, more like a small dog). Note also the Arab figures in the lunettes above, and the Christ-Child is actually feeding his goldfinch rather than, as so often in Italian painting, clutching it in an uncomfortable-looking grip.

Room 7 has more 15th century wooden figures, and Room 8 a Madonna and Child (1457) by Stefano di Antonio Vanni, with a beautiful Botticelli-esque face. There is some not very interesting pottery in a cupboard.

Room 9 has some saints by Neri di Bicci (1477), and Room 10 a charming predella by Benvenuto di Giovanni (1436-1518) of scenes from the life of the Virgin - her birth, presentation at the temple, marriage and assumption, all full of interesting detail: dogs, horses, people chatting. The marriage in particular is a wonderful scene - one can just imagine a mediaeval wedding looking like that. There is also a large 15th century Nativity by a Florentine artist, badly drawn but with some interesting detail.

Room 11 has a marvellously accomplished Christ in Glory with Saints Benedict, Attinia, Greciniana and Romualdo, set in a beautiful Tuscan landscape - note the giraffe by the lake adding an exotic touch; it is by Domenico di Ghirlandaio (1449-1492). In the same room a painting by Leon da Pistoia already shows the rich colours and simple background of the mannerists - no elaborate landscape here to distract attention from the main scene.

The real mannerist masterpiece is, however, the Deposition from the Cross (1521) by Rosso di Fiorentino in Room 12. This, one of the earliest mannerist works, is a great painting which caused as much of a scandal as the Impressionists or the cubists in their time. Contrast it with the Luca di Signorelli picture of the Madonna and Child with Saints (1491) in the same room, itself a great painting, not much earlier but in the old style, its calm figures carefully posed against an exquisitely drawn background - whereas the Deposition has no background, roughly drawn figures, huge splashes of colour, all adding up to a tremendous sense of movement, passion and dramatic intensity. It was not just the style of painting which shocked Rosso's contemporaries, but also the way that the figures were arranged, against all previous notions of iconography. One's eye is drawn immediately to the Mary Magdalen in scarlet, dominating the bottom of the painting and eclipsing the rather grey grieving Mother of Christ on the left. From there the figures extend upwards and round in a great wheel, Christ with almost a smirk on his face and none of the holiness of earlier styles. Rosso Fiorentino ( the 'Red Florentine' , so-called because of his red hair) is supposed to have portrayed himself in the figure on the right.

The second floor has little of interest and is inevitably an anti-climax after the Rosso Fiorentino. There are good views, however, from the windows of the little court or cloister.

Etruscan Museum (Museo Etrusco Guarnacci)

Open every day 09.30-13.00 and 15.0018.30 (10.00-14.00 in winter). Quite few of the rooms have brief descriptions of the contents in English.

The museum has one of the best collections of Etruscan remains, almost all dug up around Volterra, but it can be rather overwhelming - it contains, for instance some 600 funerary urns, rooms and rooms of them. So selectivity is essential. Most of the artefacts that have come down to us from the Etruscans (including almost everything in the museum) is connected with or taken from graves; it is not clear whether they really concentrated all their artistic skill on tombs, or whether it is just that only the tombs have survived.

Ground floor

The first two rooms, on either side of the entrance, contain the earliest stuff, including remains from the pre-Etruscan 'Villenovan period' and Etruscan artefacts from the l0th to 7th centuries BC. The dead were cremated and their ashes put in urns for burial. The earliest urns are mere earthenware pots with lids; already, however, the dead were being buried with all sorts of household bits and pieces to take to the underworld.

From the end of the 7th century to the 5th century BC very little remains; there may have been a demographic decline in Volterra, or possibly one of the landslides which created 'Le Balze' carried away the necropolis of that period. From the 4th century to the 1st century BC (when the Etruscan civilisation was finally swallowed up by the Roman one) the arts in Volterra - or at least the arts of the tomb - flourished and the next rooms contain large numbers of funerary urns from this period. There are far too many to look at more than two or three a room. The earliest urns are in Room III, often made of terracotta and shaped like houses, the lid serving as a roof. These roof-lids were, however, soon replaced by lids surmounted by statues representing the defunct, or sometimes husband and wife together, portrayed reclining at a Roman style banquet. Terracotta has also been replaced by stone.

Soon the body of the urn also came to be decorated, first with symbols and fantastical animals (usually griffons) as in the urns in Rooms IV and V. Then the fashion was for the dead person to be shown bidding farewell to his or her family and friends, usually with a businesslike handshake (Room VI and one end of Room VII).

The next fashion was for the dead person to be shown actually on the way to the underworld, on horseback - the best of these urns is at the other end of Room VII (urn 121). Room VIII shows couples -setting off for the underworld in covered wagons, looking rather like settlers on their way to the wild west. The more dashing (warriors and magistrates) drove themselves down in quadrigas (Room IX).

First floor

This floor contains seemingly endless urns decorated with heroic legends from the mythology that the Etruscans had by then learnt from the Romans - the urns date mostly from the 2nd or 1st century BC when Roman influence was already strong. The best urn is in Room XX, unusually for the 1st century BC made of terracotta rather than stone, and showing a beautifully modelled middle-aged couple looking tenderly at each other. This seems to be a rare example of a portrait -most urns were mass-produced in the fashion of the day and the figures were stereotypes rather than faithful portrayals of the dead person.

The rooms on this floor not containing urns are stuffed with dozens of pots, bronze figurines, bronze mirrors etc (the Etruscans were masters of bronzework). The figurines are the most interesting, especially the Giacometti-like 'Shadow of the evening' in the middle of Room XXII. It was so named by Gabriele d'Annunzio, the 19th century poet of the Risorgimento, because of its likeness to the shadows cast by the evening light. It is thought to date from the 3rd century BC.

Rooms XXIV and XXV contain jewellery, the best in Room XXV. It mostly dates from the 4th century BC, and is imitative of the Greek jewellery of the period.

Top Floor

This floor has a selection of the better and more sophisticated urns - perhaps those done to special order by the rich, as opposed to the more bourgeois mass-produced 'heroic cycle' ones of the floor below. There are particularly finely carved ones in Rooms XXIX and XXX (the last room also has a good view over the surrounding countryside). Room XXIX also shows how urns were carved, and has a particularly moving urn of a child. The urns in Room XXXII have figures on top with faces of such character that one feels that they must be portra1ts - although the experts tell us that this is by no means established.

The following rooms contain more bronzework and pots, including Greek-style black and orange vases. They are fairly crude: the Volterrans were obviously better at carving
alabaster and stone that at making pots. After Room XXXVII there is an interesting mock-up of a tomb with rows of urns on shelves.

Roman Volterra

Volterra remained a fairly important regional centre under the Romans, and has the remains of a Roman theatre (lst century BC) and baths (lst century AD). These are best seen from above. From the main street go down via Guarnacci. At the bottom, just before the mediaeval 'Florentine Gate', turn up to the left for an excellent view.

Gates
Several of the old gates into the city still survive. The most famous is the Porta all'Arco, the arch of which dates from Etruscan times - the weatherworn heads on the outside are supposed to be Etruscan gods (the superstructure is Roman and mediaeval). In 1944 the German occupying forces threatened to blow up the gate to delay the allied advance. The population pleaded with the Germans not to do this and undertook themselves to block the gate with paving-stones and rubble within 24 hours - a feat which they successfully concluded as is recorded on a plaque outside the gate.

(1994; more on minor churches and other gates to follow)