white night – Our Man In Volterra

When I’m asked why I would like to move to Italy, I dogmatically say “the weather” and “the people”, proclaiming how hard it is in Ireland (a beautiful country in many other aspects) to plan anything with friends more than 1-2 weeks in advance. But the reality is a little more complex than that. I’ll reserve some other personal reasons for another blog, but the two I will talk about here I feel are failings of Ireland, of which I am partly culpable. The second of these will lead into the lovely lifestyle part most of you are probably here for anyway!

Ireland doesn’t seem to be the country it used to be. Politics and the greedy buggers involved served to make property prices way higher than they should be. Some of this is down to the weird longing for Irish people to own a bit of land, i.e. a garden, leading to Dublin having spread out, rather than having been built skywards. The result is that Niamh and I became far removed from working colleagues and (for me) family and friends – Niamh’s family was already a ways away. In turn many of my friends scattered similarly. So, ultimately, we were less sociable in Kilcullen – the village in which we live. There have been a couple of pocketed periods where we went out with one group or another, but those fizzled out for various reasons. In Volterra, and Tuscany in general, we have found multiple people we are delighted to hang out with, and can do so with more outdoorsy ease, given the weather. Personally, I am more at my ease in Italy.

Secondly, which is leading to the lifestyle part, is that the community spirit in Italy leaves Ireland’s in the dust, as does their civic pride. With respect to the latter, of course there’s crime and grime in Italy, but there seems to be a respect for history and beauty and for other peoples’ property, so you’ll rarely find beauty-spots overly-littered or graffiti’d. I look at the unprotected fields of olives and grapes in Tuscany, and think to myself that they wouldn’t last kissing time in Ireland. It would be assumed that the contents are fair game for everyone if not fenced-off, livelihoods of the land-owners bedamned.

In Volterra, and in many similar hilltowns, there’s always something going on. There’s some artistic event, a show, a festival, and outing, a free concert and sometimes, especially during the summer, neighbourhoods in town may get together and organise dinner in the streets. The most extreme example of these nighttime meals is Siena during the Palio. However, most towns and villages get together at least once a year to celebrate together. It could be a harvest thing – a sagra, or it may coincide with Labour Day (May 1st) or a day in the religious calendar. It doesn’t matter – it’s time for a public party and the Italians are about to throw one!

Volterra has several of them that I know about: a street dinner above the ruins of the Roman Theatre, May 1st’s celebration in San Giusto at which trippa alla Volterrana (a tripe dish) is consumed in vast quantities, and a ‘white night’ dinner, which is not a normal ‘everything stays open’ white night, but a night during which the people of Volterra celebrate all things alabaster. A large dinner is held in Piazza dei Priori, and everyone is expected to be dressed in white. We haven’t attended any of these, sadly – maybe next year.

A couple of years back, Marie and Lorenzo of Authentic Tuscany invited us to a sunset dinner among the vines at the Castelvecchio winery, just outside Terricciola – one of Tuscany’s fabled ‘wine towns’. I was happy to go along, despite my initial concerns about the touristic hokeyness of it. I often have fears of looking like a tourist in Italy, which, when I think more deeply about it, is completely ridiculous. Of course I’m a tourist – you only have to look at me to know I’m far from being Italian. I should embrace the fact that there are certain things built and available specifically for tourists, and that these tourists too may also be Italian. To get off me high horse! Anyway, this dinner not only blew me away in terms of both its setting, the quality of the food and how wonderful the company was, but also with the revelation that so many tables at the dinner (which were scattered throughout the vineyard) were also Italian.

So, if you have these same hangups, let go of them – because these things are there to be enjoyed by everyone. The same goes for our next invite by Marie and Lorenzo: to a street-dinner organised by the locals. In any event, touristic hangups or not, these are not touristic events, but a way of participating in a local celebration. In fact, it’s a pleasure and an honour to be accepted on such nights, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Back to pre-Volterra, we’d known about this night for some time, and were put on notice to bring something with us to share. Niamh had the idea of making sausage rolls, so for the first (but maybe not last) time ever, we brought uncooked Irish produce (sausage meat and Clonakilty black pudding) and had planed to get pre-rolled puff pastry over there. We arrived in Volterra, and found out halfway through the week that not only had the menu for the night changed, but Niamh’s culinary services were no longer needed. Fortunately, she’s married to a human trashcan. Moreover, I was happy to have some pork products for lunch for several days. I have to say that the sausage meat, which I formed into patties, was freaking delicious!

The black pudding is so black! (Ripping Yarns fans, anyone?)… the sausage patty looks well done, but inside was so juicy. Making myself hungry…

On the day we just rocked up with some wines. Sadly, Lorenzo had to work that evening, so it was just just us and Marie. And six of Marie’s guests. And a hundred and twenty or so locals. We parked closer to Marie and Lorenzo’s and were welcomed into their kitchen, where Marie had ingredients separated out for a bruschetta assembly line Niamh would join later. Being a manly man, with muscles on top of muscles, I was asked to fetch six large bottles of water at the carpark we had just come from. I had a little bottle-carrier so I only had to do one trip, if I recall correctly. In many Italian towns, you’ll find old-looking fonts at which fresh, potable water will be found. Water is tested daily and is safe to drink. There are now also modern-looking taps in some towns. Sometimes water is free, sometimes it’s not. At some modern fonts you can actually get fizzy water for next to nothing (in Lajatico it’s 10c per litre I think). Sadly, I haven’t found anything like that in Volterra.

Anyway, I fetched the water, and then spent the rest of the time either filming or looking idiotic until it was time to be seated for food and merriment. By this time Fran and Nick had also turned up, so we had a good gang of people.

We sat, and for a few hours were wined, dined, met the mayor, had little rolled-up parchment containing poetry given to us, received impromptu Italian lessons and were serenaded by a local violinist. The food was nice – penne pasta with tomatoes, and cuttlefish with spinach in a broth, over toasted bread. I got an extra helping on this, solely because it looks like I have a belly big enough for it. This was a source of great amusement to Niamh, who knows I can only take so much of the texture of squid/octopus/cuttlefish before I tire of it, despite how good it tastes (and this was nice). My politeness won out, however, and I cleaned my plate while we chatted and laughed.

I can’t recall if there was a dessert, but I think not. We helped clear up and afterwards took a stroll into the main square of the town, while many were still chatting and drinking digestivi (think limoncello, amaro, grappa) at their table. Fran and Nick had left, so only about twelve of us rocked up and ambushed the poor girls working at the bar. We took some seats outside, while a duet were finishing up their act. We were joined by the lady, who was a singer, and she hung around while she and her pal played the kazoo and finally managed to convince Marie’s guest to see their act in a nearby town the next evening.

We had to watch our drinking due to tummy issues (me – occasional acid reflux) and driving home (Niamh), so we took our leave after about an hour and slept like logs when we got home.

If you follow Marie and Lorenzo’s Youtube channel, you might have already seen that they have an open invitation to guest at this dinner in 2026. I would highly recommend it if you really want to see what authentic town and village life is like in Tuscany. You can watch their video of the 2025 dinner below to see if you’d be interested (my own 2024 footage is on Youtube too, but will be linked to in a later blog), or find their contact form on the Authentic Tuscany website.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Unsurprisingly, we came back!

And what a day to come back to! There were multiple celebrations on the 2nd of September:

It’s our wedding anniversary
We came back to Volterra
Lajatico had its annual ‘foods of the world’ festival
It was Volterra’s White Night

It was kind of the locals to throw those two festivals on for us to help celebrate our anniversary. As we’d seen a bit of Volterra, we decided to take our friend and head over to Lajatico in the baseless hope that there’d be some Asian food to be had. There wasn’t any, but we found Lajatico to be buzzing with life and had some nice Ukranian and Romanian grub anyway!

But first, our car. We hired the car and drove it away without incident to Volterra, but due to it being parallel parked when we found it, rather than being in its own bay, we failed to spot damage to one of the front corners. We only saw it after parking in Volterra. LESSON: ALWAYS check your car fully for damage. Anyway – we did try to contact company and couldn’t get anyone on the local number, but were just told to document the damage by their head office, and were told no more. I began to get paranoid, as you often hear horror stories about some rental companies scamming people, and it resulted in me making a complete arse of myself when we returned the car – but more of that in a later blog.

Still mortified that we failed to spot this

We did land in the afternoon, and before going to Lajatico, had a nibble at Volaterra – and, of course, a cheeky Aperol, gelato (from L’Isola del Gusto) and explore.

Anyway, to Lajatico.

We had to park in a sportsground and walk 7 or 8 minutes into town. I papped some sights on the way in.

The ticket ‘office’ was on the way in, and you could either just wander in, or you could buy yourself a neat little pack of some credit stamps for stalls and wooden cutlery, all in a neato mini-tote back that could go about your neck. We all indulged, and were only together for maybe 5 minutes of the first 30 we were there, as we scattered looking for food we’d like. I’d never been in Lajatico at night, and it’s a pretty place – as it is during the daytime.

If I had one complaint, it’s that it was incredibly crowded – in particular at the food stalls. We still managed to get some grub in!

We sat near a well at the bottom of the road, and enjoyed the street entertainment.

We were there for a couple of hours, but then headed home. To chaos. Volterra was celebrating a white night, which meant there were no parking spots to be had. Not at either of our usual residents’ carparks. I had every intention of looking for more places by driving through town, but roadsigns and crowds completely impeded my route down Via Minzoni, and I had to park there, rather illicitly, as there was no way I was reversing all the way back down.

Instead we had a couple of drinks at Volaterra, noted that the concert in the main piazza was a ticket only affair. Everywhere, people were dressed in white, and tons of shops and bars stayed open until the small hours of the morning.

There’s not much more to the week, as we worked most of it. Niamh took one day off to replaster and repaint parts of a damaged outside wall. Check it out in the video near the bottom of this blog. But before that, the week consisted of walks, working and the stuffing of our faces. During one day, we went to Poggibonsi to pick up plaster and paints for Niamh, and stopped in an inoccuous looking restaurant on the side of the road in the industrial outskirts. Inside a lot of the food was based on wine, and was really delicious – Bottega Torciano! Here’s a large collection of photos: