Stephenie Meyer's vampire novels have put an Italian hill town on the map. Bronwen Riley falls for Volterra.
The New Moon movie was inspired by some unlikely locations, including Volterra in Tuscany
In Volterra, there is plenty to appeal to medievalists
Strabo the geographer described Volterra's walls high on the crest of a hill as being steep to the very top and difficult to ascend
When human teenager Bella and her unearthly beautiful vampire friend Alice arrive in Volterra in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling vampire novel New Moon, they do so at top speed in a stolen yellow Porsche. More afraid of negotiating tortuous Tuscan hill towns in a hire car than of being bitten by vampires, I arrived by bus in the company of an English couple in crumpled linen, two earnest American students and a handful of curiously silent Italians.
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Vampire destinations: towards TwilightJust back: flavours of TuscanyTravel books: guides to Romania and TuscanyItaly ski guideRome, Italy: My Kind of TownImperial Hotel Tramontano, SorrentoAs we wound cautiously up the hill, 1,800ft high, I braced myself for an awe-inspiring sight. In the same situation, Meyer's heroine says: "I stared at the ancient sienna walls and towers crowning the peak of the steep hill… I supposed the city was very beautiful. It absolutely terrified me. 'Volterra,' Alice announced in a flat, icy voice."
It is not only Meyer's heroine who found Volterra daunting. Strabo the geographer, writing in the first century, described the city walls high on the crest of a hill, as being steep to the very top and difficult to ascend. For D H Lawrence the town was an "inland island, still curiously isolated and grim". Seen from a distance on this sunny day, however, the bright autumn light made it hazy and golden, like a mirage in a fairy tale.
Once out of the bus, though, I felt an instant chill; the sun gave only an illusion of warmth in a biting wind that threatened winter. While vampires don't feel the cold, they certainly don't like the sun, which was an encouraging thought as I made my way to the Piazza dei Priori, the still-beating heart of the town. This is the main attraction for fans of New Moon, the second in the sensationally successful Twilight series, and its clock tower in particular, home in the film to the Volturi, a coven of elite vampires.
The collection of medieval buildings dominated by the 13th-century Palazzo dei Priori, now the town hall, loomed over the square, making it seem small and dark. The only way out was through narrow alleyways and streets made black by the tricks of light and shadow.
In May this year, Volterra received a blow more deadly than a stake through the heart. Although the ancient Tuscan hilltop town provides the climactic backdrop to Meyer's New Moon, another Tuscan town, Montepulciano, was chosen as the main location for the film and a five-day shoot during which teenage fans booked every hotel room for miles.
It seems the town's very medieval intimacy doomed Volterra's hopes of starring on film. Montepulciano's main square is all about Renaissance light and symmetry and, it must be said, a certain aristocratic froideur, which, I suppose, suits Meyer's description of the Italian vampires being "the nearest thing to royalty". But the most unforgettable thing for me when I visited was the delectable Tuscan scent of truffle oil and Vino Nobile, Montepulciano's famous wine, in the air.
To explain the Volterrans' disappointment for those as yet uninitiated into the Twilight phenomenon, Meyer's saga has sold 42.4 million copies worldwide. The film of her first book, Twilight, was a huge box-office success and now New Moon, released this weekend, is confidently expected to be a similar hit with teenagers (and "Twilight mums") the world over. For those more interested in art than arteries, however, this news can surely only be good.
In Volterra, there is plenty to appeal to medievalists: beyond the square is the duomo, consecrated in 1120, and 13th-century baptistery, and the delightful city art gallery, housed in the 15th-century Minucci-Solaini palace, a building as enjoyable as the collection. Its inner courtyard gives a wonderful sense of interior lives in the confines of a medieval hill town, the feeling of being enclosed yet overheard and overlooked, of needing constantly to watch your back and above your head.
On the same street is the Palazzo Incontri-Viti, which, though built towards the end of the 16th century, propels the visitor towards a more outward-looking chapter in Volterra's history. This building is still occupied by the descendants of Giuseppe Viti (1816-60), a merchant who travelled the world selling Volterra's most famous commodity – alabaster.
But all these are mere diversions in comparison with the real attraction of Volterra – the Etruscans. Although Meyer claims to have written the Italian chapter before spotting Volterra on a map of Italy and quite understandably thinking that the name was perfect for her plot, her ancient subterranean vampires are surely inspired by Volterra's original inhabitants, who are known dimly to us only through the contents of their graves.
Velathri, founded in the seventh century BC, was one of the most important Etruscan cities, before falling in the third century BC to Rome, after which it was known as Volaterrae. One of the most significant collections of Etruscan art in Italy is housed at the Museo Guarnacci. This is a period piece in its own right, with some displays virtually unchanged since the 1870s: cabinets stuffed with row upon row of objects, including a quite overwhelming display of funereal urns in alabaster and terracotta on the ground floor. Crammed together on rows of shelves, each one has the image of a man or woman reclining as at a banquet on top of the urn, staring out at the gaping visitors.
It is worth visiting Volterra for this museum alone and for just one exhibit, a bronze votive figure of a boy, extraordinarily elongated in form. It is known as the Ombra della Sera, or Shadow of the Night, presumably because it looks like the long shadow cast by a person at twilight. There is something so striking about it that I returned time and again to look at it. Thought to date from the third century BC, it looks incredibly modern – the work of Giacometti is usually used in the same breath. The boy's haircut is pure Peter Pan.
By the time I left the museum, the light was beginning to fade. I would have to save the archaeological park for another day but there was just time to race to the "Balze", the eroded cliffs outside the medieval walls. I walked through the city gate, leaving the confined space of the medieval world and entering a more relaxed suburb of small houses and workshops, of children returning from school and caged canaries hung outside houses, twittering in the last of the light.
Etruscan Velathri was many times larger than the medieval settlement, a fact that became plain as I approached the remains of the Etruscan walls, gigantic blocks of stone, clinging on to the edge of the cliffs as the landscape rippled away into the dusk. Beyond the cliffs, the land lay in great gashes, the results of erosion and alabaster mines old and new. A gigantic red sun began to fall away as the shadow of the Volterran night crept over the scene. The air was chill and I was keen to avoid any vampiric entertainments that may be laid on for visitors after dark. It was good to think that I could retreat to the warmth of my luxurious palazzo hotel in nearby Siena, hopefully under the protection of the city's emblem of the wolf – in Meyer speak, werewolves and vampires can't stand each other. Volterra was mercifully vampire free – for the moment at least.
fonte: telegrafh.co.uk
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