When Siena fell in 1555, the diehards took refuge here: for four years Montalcino was the last Sienese republic, and the fourteenth-century fortress that sheltered them now pours, in its courtyard, the reason for the town's worldwide fame. Brunello — born from sangiovese grosso through the Biondi Santi family's intuition in the nineteenth century — was among the first Italian wines granted DOCG status in 1980 and today serves as an Italian embassy to the world.
The town within its walls lives on enoteche and workshops; the Romanesque abbey of Sant'Antimo, ten minutes away among olive groves, with its Gregorian chants, is the perfect farewell.
Near Montalcino
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
