Agriturismo or Town Center Apartment/Hotel in Montepulciano?

We stayed in town in Montepulciano, just off Piazza Grande, a few years ago. We loved it! The evenings are charming. The crowds disappear and the locals are out! We enjoyed many lovely dinners and roamed around the quiet streets.

Personally, I prefer to stay in town to be able to wander around in the evening when most of these places are at their most magical. Staying at an agriturismo doesn't give me the experience of Italy that I crave. An agriturismo feels to me more like staying at some villa spa in California, with staff who happen to speak Italian.

My reason to choose between them has to do with wanting different types of accommodations and/or different settings-city versus country. When we took longer family trips of 3weeks +, my kids really enjoyed being outside the city or even outside the small town. We stayed in an agriturismo for a week that became our base for visiting Tuscany, including Florence. The rest of the trip we were either in the heart of the city (Rome, Venice) or in small towns. So being in the middle of olive groves and fields of sunflowers with a pool that overlooked it all was a different feel. We did have to drive every time we actually wanted to see something, but we also had some downtime just enjoying sitting outside. For shorter trips I still try to break up city and small town, but probably would not be staying longer than 2-3 nights in any one place. Our most recent trip was to France and we broke up our Provence stay with 2 nights in St Remy and then 2 nights outside of a small town. We enjoyed both types of accommodations but again did a little more "sitting" at the place that was out in the country. So basically, if your trip is one city setting after another and if you have access to a car, I'd suggest you pick the farmhouse. Otherwise I'm sure you would enjoy staying in montepulciano as well.