After the Counter-Reformation, the bishop of Pistoia Francesco Bossi was invited to verify that its precepts, established in the Council of Trent, were being applied. According to his report, Montalcino was impoverished and backward compared to Pienza, since its rents and profits flowed for the most part towards Siena. The country and city churches alike were in decline, thus they lacked the structural premises for being able to apply the new indications from the Holy See. For these reasons the bishop emphasized the necessity to restore its ancient prestige: to differentiate the cathedral from the other churches in the diocese, recover its dominant position, find the funds to establish a seminary, and restore the “sedes episcopalis” built at the behest of Pius II and almost never used as the bishop’s residence. In the seventeenth century the city was enriched with new buildings like the theater, built after the birth of the Accademia degli Astrusi in the footsteps of the Accademia degli Intronati in Siena, and the new church of the Madonna del Soccorso, a center of town devotion raised after the victory over the Spanish siege. In the course of the eighteenth century Montalcino witnessed the passage of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany from Medici rule to that of the Hapsburg-Lorraine dynasty. The suppression of the religious orders implemented by Grand Duke Leopold (1765-1790) . . .