Stephenie: I chose Italy because I needed a place with a really long history. Choosing Volterra itself was a strange thing. I wrote the whole Volturi scene before I’d picked a location for it. For the first time, I was planning to create a fictional city, because at this point, I was starting to realize that people were actually going to read this book, and I was nervous about what the real life citizens of Forks would think, and more especially what the real life people of La Push would think—I’d taken some rather big liberties with their fictional history, and I wasn’t sure if they would find it amusing or irritating. So, to avoid similar moments of panic, I decided to set my clan of ancient ruling vampires in a made up place. I was going to call this place “Volturin,” and I knew it needed to be located in Tuscany about an hour or two from Florence—I’d already written the drive from the airport. I’d also already written my descriptions of the plaza and clock tower and Volturi turret. So I pull up a map of Tuscany, trying to decide if Alice should drive north, south, east, or west, and look at that—there is a city named Volterra just about an hour from Florence. So I google image search Volterra, and the very first picture that comes up is the Volterra clock tower. Chills. I called my sister (who’d already read about my fictional Volturin) and told her to go look at Volterra. She freaked, too, because she’d pictured it the same way, too. It was actually a rather creepy moment.