Luxury dog-friendly hotels in Montepulciano, Italy

True beauty is on the outside and in; driving up to Montepulciano in the Val d’Orcia, the small town appears as a picturesque hilltop idyll, but once you enter the Porta al Prato, you’ll find more manmade than natural wonders on the cobbled streets. Follow the winding stone alleyways up to the Piazza Grande to discover grand noble palaces, Michelozzo’s crenulated town hall and the Duomo, still unfinished (400 years on). When the midday sun gets too hot, retreat into one of the many subterranean wine cellars full of barrels of Montepulciano’s famous vino; all in the name of sightseeing, after all…