Piazza Grande, Montepulciano site features

You arrive at this square from below, always, because it is the highest point of the town and the single main street climbs the whole way to it. The first impression is of enclosure: a roughly quadrangular space held tight by five compact building masses with very little space between them.

Take them in turn. The cathedral is the one that stops people, because its façade is unfinished — raw brick where the stone facing was meant to go, on the grandest square in the region. Beside it the bell tower is the only surviving structure of the ancient pieve that stood here before the cathedral.

Opposite is the Palazzo Comunale, designed by Michelozzo, austere and Florentine — and still the town hall, with the comune's offices at number 1.

Then palazzo Contucci, with a historic wine cellar beneath it; palazzo Nobili-Tarugi, attributed to Antonio da Sangallo the Elder or to Vignola; and the palazzo del Capitano.

In the widening beside palazzo Nobili-Tarugi stands the one free-standing object in the space: a well designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder while he was working in the city — which is to say by the architect of San Biagio, down in the fields below, at the same period.

What is no longer here is worth knowing, because it changes how the space reads. Until the market moved away this was a working market square, and it carried a column on which people sentenced to the pillory were publicly exposed. The quiet, formal square you are standing in is the second version of itself.

• The highest point of Montepulciano — the square is the summit of a town built as a single climb, which is why reaching it feels like an arrival.
• The unfinished cathedral façade — raw brick where stone facing was intended, on the principal square of the town.
• The cathedral bell tower — the only surviving structure of the ancient pieve that preceded the cathedral on this site.
• The Palazzo Comunale — designed by Michelozzo, Florentine and austere, and still the working town hall at Piazza Grande 1.
• Palazzo Nobili-Tarugi — attributed to Antonio da Sangallo the Elder or to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola.
• Palazzo Contucci — on the square, with a historic cellar beneath it.
• The palazzo del Capitano — the fifth of the compact volumes that enclose the space.
• Sangallo's well — in the widening beside palazzo Nobili-Tarugi, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder during his stay in the city; the only free-standing object in the square.
• The statutes of 1337 — they fixed the square's boundaries and uses, made crimes committed here punishable more severely, and record the column where the pilloried were exposed.