Volterra is a town with ancient Etruscan origins. It is set at 530 m asl of altitude and has a population of about 11000 inhabitants. Inside the town, the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the church of the Ss. Giusto and Clemente, the Tower of the Podestà and of the Bonguidi, the Palazzo Pretorio and the Palazzo dei Priori can be admired.

The area of Volterra was rich in settlements since the Neolithic, but it was thanks to the Etruscans that the first fortified built-up area was founded. Once they settled this place in the VII centuty B.C., the Etrurians created the city of Velahtri, which was surrounded by a seven-kilometre wall since the IV century B.C.
Inside Velahtri not only the inhabitants but also the pasture and farming areas were protected. It became one of the twelve territories ruled by the Lucumoes of the Etruscan League.
Since the beginning, the town turned out to be an important nerve-centre for Etruria to control the Gauls' pressure from the north and also the Romans' force from the south. With the defeat at the lake Vadimone in 283 B.C., the Etruscans started to be substituted by the Romans and Volterra submitted to them in 260 B.C. During the second Punic war (205 B.C.), the city even offered timbe and food-stuffs to Scipio's Capitolian army.
In 90 B.C., Volterra definitively became a Roman city. Few years later, it participated to the civil war between Marius and Sulla, joining Marius and being defeated around 80 B.C.
At the time of the Barbarian invasions in the V century A.D., Volterra had already been transformed into a medieval "castrum" and it became the base of an archiepiscopal curia that controlled the area corresponding to the old Lucumoes' territories.
In order to defend itself from the Heruli and the Goths, it accepted to harbour a Byzantine military garrison.
This town also played an important role during the occupation by the Lombards and it later enjoyed the Carolingian emperors' favours, thanks to whom the Volterra's episcopate obtained numerous privileges and properties between the IX and the XI century, to the extent that it also exercised civil power.
Volterra inherited numerous and greatly interesting archaeological sites from the Etruscans and the Romans. The Roman theatre of Vallebuona, which was built in the Augustan age by the Caecina family following the example of the Greek odeums, is particularly well preserved.
Moreover, visitors can also see the Acropolis of Pian di Castello and the V century B.C. Etruscan Necropolis having a peculiar structure. In effect, the tombs do not rise over the soil but they are excavated inside the gravel of the Volterra's hill.