Another hidden beauty

Another hidden gem of Italy, also located in the region Tuscany, is the town called Volterra. Do you know those surreal backgrounds you can choose for desktop of your computer? The ones that look like they can not possibly be true, that such landscape doesn't exist? Well that is how you feel in this little town. Like you are dreaming and something so beautiful can not possibly be real. But it is.

Volterra is a small town, 541 meters above the sea level. This is a stone town with narrow streets, magnificent palaces and fortifications that are all made of stone. Walking through this town you will have the feeling of going back to the past, because the remains of some ancient times are at every step. The oldest palace in the Tuscany region called Palazzo dei Priori, a Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, one of the finest private residential buildings Palazzo Viti, Roman theater and baths and many other beautiful structures await in Volterra.

If you enjoy visiting museums rich with artifacts from history, you are in luck because here you can find a lot of museums. Among them there is one of the leading Etruscan museums in Tuscany. Museo Etrusco Guarnacci Volterra owns more than 600 marble and alabaster urns, with engraved motifs and metaphors from the afterlife. Museo della Tortura or torture museum contains a lot of instruments of torture and capital execution used from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era. Not something I would have the stomach to see, but still.

This was another day trip organized by Erasmus Land organization. We had two tourist guides who split us in two groups, one that would be shown around in English and one in Italian. They always do that and even though I don't speak Italian that well I always chose the Italian one. It is just that every time I listened the explanations in English they were too short and simplified. In Italian, even if I didn't understand absolutely everything, I would still get much more information.

For me, the best thing about visiting this little town was the sun. It made this day even more beautiful. I can't believe that I was able to get sunburns in March. In fact, when I got home I felt nauseous and lightheaded. We had a party in my apartment and everyone was going out to some club after it. I will never forget how much I wonted to go with them to the club, but I couldn't. The next day, after enough sleep, although still with red cheeks, I felt fine. It turns out I had the fever from the sun...in March! How crazy is that?