Leaving from Florence, Tuscany, you all pack into your vehicle to drive through the wondrous rolling hills, their beauty famously epitomised in paintings and poems throughout history. Every glance is a photo. You stop a moment along the way to take some photos, pick flowers from the road side and absorb the scenery. You hear only the birds singing, their cheerful chirping epitomising your happiness in being here. 

After what seems like mere minutes, but is in fact just over 100 kilometres from the centre of Florence, you arrive in Montalcino. In the province of Siena, in Tuscany, Montalcino is a stunning hill town, with origins dating back to Etruscan times. 

The famed Tuscan sun sits high in the vibrant blue sky as you enter into the city through a large arched doorway in the pale grey stone walls that surround the town. Some of these medieval walls date back to the 13th century. You run curious fingers across the ridges of the rough stones, feeling their cool hardness, and the lick of the light moss that sits in the crevices. 

From the outer edges of the city, you can see over into the valleys below, where vineyards drag across the countryside. The ancestor of these grapes is the famed Brunello di Montalcino. The only place in the world where Brunello is made, its rich taste values the 20 euro or more per bottle. 

Entering into the city, narrow streets dissect the city’s hills, paved with large flat paving stones which drum the click-clack of your heels, the rhythm echoing that of the horse hooves that would have pulled carriages through these lanes in times long past. 

Along these streets, small doorways porthole you into stores, bars and restaurants. The clutter and buzz of diners seeps out into the streets, the chitter-chatter cutting into the click clack of your passing, bringing to you the sounds of happy diners, nestled where leisurely sips are taken and forks hover in mid-air as lunch-time conversations take priority over anything else in the world. 

The light, cool greyness of the town engulfs you and the smooth expanse of the blue-sky lid contrasts with the cobbled stones that construct the entire city. You wind upwards to a piazza which houses a pillared-front church. The silence and tranquillity of this area is religious in itself. 

Passing on, the roads wind you around to other churches, and towers that point upwards like accusatory fingers. You enter into one church. It is small and cool inside, and you escape from the expansive heat of the outdoors. Your pupils take a moment to dilate in adjustment to the darkness here, and the coolness breathes refreshingly over your warmed skin. Marble pillars stand guard over the parallel pews that dissect this cavernous space, which balloons above the extravagant altar into a domed ceiling dissected by concentric lines centred by a circular window from which enters sunshine illuminating the altar below. 

Back outside in the heat of the day, you wind through more narrow stone streets, pausing to photograph picturesque doorways, curtains billow from windows, dancing in the breeze, whilst flowers in planter-boxes below wave like an appreciative audience. Arches embrace and support narrow lanes. Even the laundry pegged outside of open-shuttered windows is romantic here. 

Towers loom above, dissecting the blue of the sky. Green trees and shrubs stand amongst the cobbled streets. Stairs wind up and down the town, making it a labyrinth of tight streets to explore. Hours pass as you wind up and down the city, rounding bends and traversing straight streets. 

After some hours of winding and wandering, you head to the city’s peak. Here, you arrive in Piazza Fortezza, housing a castle perched in the centre of a large field of green green grass. You lay yourselves down on the grass, feeling the coolness of the blades on your skin, being cooled on the underneath whilst your faces are warmed by the Tuscan sun. White clouds have formed in the sky and dance above you. There is absolute silence here, shattered only by your voices sharing the found images made out in the cloud forms above. A sentry, a tower, a rooster, all float by overhead. 

Cooled and re-energised, you enter into the castle. Pentagonal in design, this castle was constructed in the 12th century. Entering into the castle fortress, you find yourselves in an expansive open-aired courtyard where large pebbles crunch underfoot. Here you see the church of Sant’Agostino, and the Musei Riuniti (museum). At the end of the courtyard there is an enotecca, selling some of the world’s best wines, all perched on precarious shelving dwarfing you all, as it reaches up into the high ceilings. 

After perusing the wines on offer, you wander back out into the courtyard where wooden tables offer you a place to sit outside, shaded by umbrellas, whilst you sample some of the local wine. Served with plump olives and salty nuts, your mouths are awash with pleasures. An afternoon is whiled away, as the wine bottle slowly empties, the sun lowering in the sky. Wandering back to the car, the sunlight falling on the streets has been turned down a little and the colours are shadowed somewhat in the afternoon. 

Driving back to Florence, the sunset is framed by your window pane. Again, stopping to take photographs the scenery is changing before your eyes in the dimming light. Always beautiful, as you imagine it must have always been and always will, kept as it is with utter respect by its inhabitants and visitors.