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This is a great, simple Old World café-bar with tables set under the partly frescoed portico of the main piazza; their sandwiches and gelato are definitely worth a try.

The one-time best place in town has gone a bit touristy, but the Tuscan dishes are tasty as ever.

Another showcase for alabaster workers who are too busy to maintain their own sales outlets.

The Gazzarrinis have been making superb pastries, cakes and biscuits for five generations. To go with the cantucci they carry over 40 vin santo labels.

Try the hearty cinghiale alla Volterrana (wild boar with black olives) in this 19th-century converted mill.

The more imaginative dishes at “The Trough” are excellent (though the standard fare seems perfunctorily prepared). Classical music adds to the lively atmosphere.

A fine restaurant with legendary cuisine and a stupendous setting in the Hotel Cisterna.

This pastry and panino wine bar occupies an airy medieval room. Don’t miss the deli counter at the back.

This old mining town has a number of esoteric museums on the subject. Of particular artistic interest are the Dark Ages reliefs decorating the Romanesque Duomo. The Palazzo del Podestà houses a museum containing Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Maestà (1330s) and a tiny pre-Etruscan menhir (flat stone carved vaguely as a person). The upper “new town” (developed in the 14th century) is defended by the Gothic Torre del Candeliere and ramparts, offering fine views over the town and Colline Metal-lifere (literally the “iron-rich hills”).

The subject of the most popular aerial-shot postcard in Tuscany is a tiny hamlet two streets wide. It is entirely enclosed within medieval walls, whose 14 towers were compared by Dante to the Titans guarding the lowest level of Hell. The town holds a week-long medieval festival in July.