The Complete Guide To: Tuscany
Start with the exquisite art, museums and churches, then relish the cuisine and epic countryside. Jonathan Buckley highlights the best of the quintessential Italian region
Panoramic view of the Duomo, Florence
Interior of the Uffizi
Pisa
Michelangelo's David
Street scene, Cortona
San Gimignano
Lunch al fresco, Chianti
The Palio, Siena
Where do I start?
All roads in Tuscany lead to Florence, the region's biggest city and one of Europe's premier tourist magnets. You could spend a fortnight here and still not see every one of the masterpieces to be found in Florence's museums and churches. The Uffizi gallery, Italy's most popular art collection, will take you the best part of a day. It opens from 8.15am-6.50pm daily, except Monday.
You can also sample the colossal art collection of the Palazzo Pitti, the sculptures of the Bargello, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the Accademia, the amazing frescoes of Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Maria del Carmine, San Marco and Santissima Annunziata. Details from the city's main tourist office at Via Cavour 1 (firenze.turismo.toscana.it), which opens 8.30am-6.30pm daily (Sundays to 1pm).
Oh, and you can't miss the Duomo and Baptistery, of course, and you'd be mad to leave Florence without visiting San Lorenzo (the mausoleum of the Medici), and Santo Spirito and Santa Trinita and Santa Felìcita.
I get the picture. But where next?
The obvious second stop is Siena. If Florence is primarily about the Renaissance, in Siena it's the medieval period that predominates. And here the cityscape itself is the great attraction. You can have a fabulous time here without setting foot in a single museum: arrayed on three ridges, the city presents a succession of beautiful urban vistas, girdled by superb countryside on all sides. There's no more beautiful public space in all of Italy then Siena's Il Campo, the city's great scallop-shaped piazza; and the nearby Duomo is one of the country's mightiest monuments. Which is not to say that it doesn't have any first-rank museums. To get the measure of Sienese art you must visit the Museo Civico, inside the magnificent Gothic Palazzo Pubblico (open from 10am to 7pm daily in summer, admission €7.50). You could also visit the Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo; the tourist office (which is open daily from 9am-7pm; terresiena.it) can give you full details.
Give yourself time to explore the city at leisure. Pedestrianised Siena is an easy-going contrast to frenetic Florence, except when the lunacy of the Palio is happening. This hell-for-leather bareback horse-race – Italy's most celebrated festival – takes place on 2 July and 16 August. If you want to be in town for it, book your accommodation now. The Grand Hotel Continental is centrally located and doubles start at €220 room only (royaldemeure.com).
Any other must-see cities?
Plenty. Pisa, for instance, has much more to offer than just the Leaning Tower. The tower is a remarkable thing, certainly, but it's just a single component of the amazing Campo dei Miracoli, where the Duomo, Baptistery and Camposanto complete an unrivalled quartet of medieval masterpieces. For information on Pisa, call 00 39 050 929 777 or visit pisa.turismo.toscana.it ahead of time, or contact the tourist office on the north side of the station at Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 13 (Mon–Fri 9am–7pm, Sat 9am–1.30pm) or in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (open daily 10am-5pm).
Though the medieval core of the city is inundated with coach parties, the rest of the town is ignored by most visitors, which is a pity, as it has several fine churches and museums, and lots of fine restaurants too. For authentic Pisan home cooking, nowhere's better than San Omobono, Piazza San Omobono 6, featuring dishes such as brachette alla renaiaola – pasta in a purée of greens and smoked fish. To capture something of the atmosphere of the 19th-century Grand Tour, head for the Royal Victoria (lungarno Pacinotti 12; royalvictoria.it). Run by the same family since its foundation in 1837, this old-fashioned and appealingly frayed three-star is the most characterful of central Pisa's hotels – and the best value. Doubles start at €100.
The big university gives Pisa a buzz, but it's a bit too gritty for some. Neighbouring Lucca, on the other hand, is graceful without being dull, with a largely traffic-free centre that's strewn with handsome buildings – you can hardly walk for five minutes without coming upon a small piazza and marble-fronted church facade. Lucca isn't a major stop on the tourist trail, but its limited accommodation is always in demand, so it's wise to book ahead at any time of year. First choice is Palazzo Busdraghi, Via Fillungo 170 (apalazzo busdraghi.it), a tiny and central four-star hotel, richly furnished with fine antiques. In summer, you won't pay less than €200 for a double room, including breakfast.
An ideal hill town?
The one that everybody knows is San Gimignano, a village that, thanks mainly to its famous towers, receives far more day-trippers in summer than it can comfortably handle. That said, the fresco-lined Collegiata is definitely worth coming to see, and San Gimignano also has one of Tuscany's best civic museums.
The popularity of Cortona has similarly become something of an issue in recent years. This perfect hill-town, located within sight of Lago Trasimeno – was relatively unknown prior to the publication of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany; nowadays the place entices coachloads of her readers to the place where Mayes realised the expatriate dream of the Tuscan good life.
If it's quiet that you want, why not try instead lofty Volterra, west of San Gimignano? Brooding on a windswept plateau enclosed by volcanic hills, it was described by DH Lawrence as "a sort of inland island", and has an air of being somewhat cut off from the rest of the region. Like Cortona, it was a major Etruscan settlement, and the town's museum are stuffed with relics of that enigmatic civilisation.
The classic hill-towns, though, lie south of Siena. One of the highest, Montepulciano, is built along a narrow ridge, with a long main street and alleys that drop away to the walls. Endowed with dozens of palazzi and churches during the Renaissance, it fell into neglect in subsequent centuries, and today makes most of its money from its wine industry, based on the famed Vino Nobile. Its tourist profile becomes higher with each passing year though, and the same goes for tiny Pienza, 20km to the west of Montalcino.
As perfect a Renaissance creation as any in Italy, Pienza was built by Pope Pius II on the site of the village where he was born in 1405. Though Pius's scheme didn't progress much beyond the central piazza, few places in Tuscany have as much immediate charm. And it has a very nice hotel, the three-star Il Chiostro di Pienza, Corso Rossellino (relaisilchiostrodipienza.com), an extremely chi-chi conversion of the old cloister and other parts of a former Franciscan monastery.
The third gorgeous hill-town in this zone of Tuscany is Montalcino, a quiet, likeable and affluent little place that has scarcely changed in appearance since the 16th century. It looks wonderful from below, and when you're up by the castle the view of the surrounding hills, vineyards, orchards, olive groves and ancient oaks is equally lovely. It has few specific sights, but makes an excellent base for the exploration of southern Tuscany. It's also the source of one of Italy's finest wines, Brunello di Montalcino.
Talking of wine – what's Chianti like?
There's some justice to the "Chiantishire" tag. Foreign residents might account for only 5% of Chianti's 45,000 inhabitants, but tourism has overtaken wine to become the region's most important cash crop, and has helped push property prices in Chianti's medieval hamlets beyond the reach of many of the locals – a lot of the houses are shuttered up in the off-season. There is, nonetheless, much to enjoy in Chianti: quiet back roads, hundreds of acres of woodland, and of course the vineyards.
A couple of three-star hotels on Piazza Matteotti offer comfortable accommodation. One is the Del Chianti at number 86; doubles from €90 including breakfast (albergodelchianti.it). The other is Da Verrazzano at number 28; doubles including breakfast from €103, though if you want an en suite bathroom it will cost you €15 more (albergoverrazzano. it); this hotel also has an extremely good restaurant.
The best of Chianti's countryside lies to the south of here, in the Monti del Chianti. The Relais Vignale, on the edge of the village at Via Pianigiani 9 (vignale.it), has a wine bar in the cellars, two restaurants and a heated swimming pool. Chianti is also prime agriturismo territory, with scores of farms offering rooms or apartments, or even self-contained mini-villas. You'll find a good choice of properties at the following websites: agriturismo.net and agriturismo.it.
Shore things?
There are decent beaches on the Tuscan island of Elba. The isle stretches a maximum of 30km from coast to coast. The permanent population numbers a mere 30,000 inhabitants, spread throughout the island in picturesque coastal and mountain villages and a handful of larger towns. It has to be said, though, that Tuscany's mainland coast is often unalluring. Livorno, the largest place by the sea, is a fairly grim port. And though there's some fine sand at Viareggio – Tuscany's major resort – the best bits have been appropriated by the seaside hotels that overlook the palm-lined promenade.
One portion of the Tuscan coast, however, remains unspoiled: the Monti dell'Uccellina, or "Mountains of the Little Bird", which take their name from birds that use these hills as a stepping-stone between Europe and North Africa. Rising suddenly from the coastal plain, about 12km south of Grosseto, this breathtaking piece of countryside combines cliffs, coastal marsh, macchia, forest-covered hills, pristine beaches and some of the most beautiful stands of umbrella pines in the country. Devoid of the bars, marinas, hotels and half-finished houses that have destroyed much of the Italian littoral, it's perhaps the most peaceful corner of Tuscany.
Jonathan Buckley is co-author of the new 'Rough Guide to Florence and the Best of Tuscany' and 'The Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria'
Getting there
Tuscany is best served for Irish travellers
by Ryanair who fly to the Galileo Galilei International Airport in Pisa. The train to Florence pulls up 20 metres from the check-in area and it is a five-minute cab ride to the
centre of Pisa. Italy has a great rail system
and Aer Lingus passengers could make the
most of that by flying to Rome and spending some time in the capital before catching the high speed train to Florence that takes just two hours. Check out the railway system at www.trenitalia.com
Getting around
Given the terrain, rail services
are surprisingly good in Tuscany,
with buses filling in many of the gaps.
Many visitors choose to rent a car.
If you decide to drive, be aware that
many town and city centres are off-limits
to motorists who are not registered as local residents; though if you have a booking
at a central hotel, you can usually
drive to it ? many
provide parking.
March 22, 2009
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