Twilight Nerd Moment Here

So, I apologize, but I’m about to have a nerd moment here. Or would you consider this a geek moment? Anyway, if you’re judgmental, stop reading and just look at the pictures.

A week before we left the US I took a box of books to the Paperback Exchange on Jonestown Road in Harrisburg to pick up some picture books for teaching here in France. I had a bit of extra store credit so I decided to treat myself to something for the plane ride. Well, I’d been wondering about this Twilight series . . . 24 hours later I was hooked. A huge chunk of the second book takes place in a town in Italy called Volterra. I assumed it was fictitious until I started thinking, boy, that name sounds familiar. . . and then I realized I’ve been there!

That's my brother taking a picture of Volterra. (Many of these are actually shots he took . . . thanks, Steve.) We stopped there on our family trip to Italy last April. This is pretty much the iconic shot of Volterra, so I'm thinking that round tower just might be the round tower referenced in the book. I suppose I could do some research but I'm not going to be that nerdy today.
I don't have many pictures of Volterra because A) I was chasing Steve, who decided to take off on his own and didn't have a cell phone, and B) I didn't know that Volterra was the vampire "royal city." Why wasn't that in my guidebook somewhere?!?!

Not only did Steve lose my family in Volterra, but he then lost me. Or rather, I lost him. And then I was just lost. Lost in a city of vampires. I ended up alone, at dusk, in a park. . .

At the bottom of the park was this old fountain. . . very vampire-y, isn't it?

The name and history of Volterra fit the story well, but San Gimignano had much more of the feeling I would imagine for the town (could just be because a lot more of the medieval architecture there is preserved). The picture in the front of New Moon (and the first picture of this blog post) is actually one of the gates of San Gimignano. This is the inside of that gate:

Here's the town square of San Gimignano--exactly what I'd imagine for the Volterra in the book:
But to be fair, the piazza in Volterra looked a lot like this, too (I had to check to see which town this picture was taken in). In fact, most towns in this part of Tuscany look pretty much the same. Here's the only shot I have of the main Piazza in Volterra:
And just as important to Twilight readers as the piazza is that tiny, shadowy side street. . . here's one in S.G.:

It might as well be Siena or another city from the same period. . . they all look a lot alike!

This is in a museum in S.G. that I was too cheap to pay for. Steve took the picture on his way up one of the towers. S.G. is famous for its medieval towers. But back to Volterra.

I think this is a distance shot of the town square of Volterra (the place where that pivotal scene takes place) but I'm not sure because I was so hopelessly lost wandering around the town. I ended up at another round tower . . . this one part of a prison still in use today:

Now that I think about being lost and wandering around outside a prison, alone, as it was getting dark, I realize that Volterra was suitably spooky, even without any vampires.