  By Don Faust, www.DonFaustPhoto, for USA TODAY Chris Gray Faust, of USA TODAY, had an informative article about Volterra, with its real Palazzo dei Priori, and Montepulciano, where New Moon was actually filmed. The photos from the New Moon Tour in Volterra are both beautiful and very interesting. The Volterra tourism board sponsors Twilight-themed weekends, including a reception with blood in what appears to be test tubes? Cool!
‘Part of a dark tradition’
Perhaps that’s because Volterra is doing everything possible to make sure that New Moon is synonymous with their city — even if it isn’t the one on screen. The town sent a team of colorfully dressed flag throwers to the Rome Film Festival last month, where they walked the red carpet behind the movie’s actors.
Not all cities would embrace vampires, particularly one with as proud a history. One of the 12 Etruscan power centers from the sixth to fourth century B.C. built on an economy of alabaster, iron and salt, Volterra boasts one of the largest collections of that civilization’s artifacts at the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum. A Roman amphitheater outside the town walls dates to the first century, and its medieval center remains one of the best preserved in Italy.
On his twice-weekly New Moon walking tours, guide Vincenzo Riolo sandwiches history between the fiction. “We try to connect the vampires to the Etruscans,” he says just outside Porta all’ Arco, a city gate built in the fourth century B.C. “It’s part of the dark tradition of the city.”
But of course, it’s the fanged ones that the teenagers want to see. The only English speakers in a group of Italian Twilight fans, Kunke and Regier, of Vancouver, giggle and snap photos in Volterra’s narrow alleys, trying to scare each other. “Omigod, is that a bat?” Kunke says.
Riolo leads the tour into a dark building, where they walk down a clammy staircase.
Waiting at the bottom: two cloaked men and a small woman, all deathly pale. “The Volturi!” Regier gasps.
The vampires walk silently among the tourists, pulling “victims” up on a stone table. The girls huddle closer together. “This is creepy,” Kunke whispers — before a vampire grabs Regier. As he attempts to bite her, she dissolves into laughter.
After the tableau, the tour-goers relive their New Moon moments over drinks. Turns out that the actors who played the Volturi are members of Compagnia della Fortezza — a theater troupe of convicts named after Volterra’s Medici-era fortress-turned-prison.
For once, Kunke and Regier are speechless. Guide Riolo laughs at their shocked expressions.
“Nothing is strange here,” he says later. “It’s part of our DNA.”
Read the rest of the article here and see more tour photos here.
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