You cannot really separate Tuscany from its wine. The vineyards are the landscape, the harvest is the calendar, and every hilltop town seems to have grown up around a cellar. You do not need to be an expert to love…
Supporting Guide
The Best Photo Spots in Tuscany
Some landscapes are beautiful. Tuscany is composed. The rolling hills, the lone cypresses, the farmhouses set just so on a distant ridge, it all looks arranged, as if a painter got there first and the land grew to match. Most…
Where to Stay in Tuscany
Where you sleep in Tuscany shapes the whole trip, more than almost anywhere I know. Base yourself well and the region unfolds around you in easy day trips, with long golden evenings on a terrace; base yourself badly and you…
The Best Time to Visit Tuscany
Tuscany changes its whole character with the seasons, more than most places, because the landscape itself is the attraction and the landscape is never the same twice. The green, poppy-scattered hills of May are a different world from the gold,…
The Perfect Tuscany Itinerary
Tuscany does not want to be rushed. The temptation, with so many famous towns so close together, is to tick them off one after another until they blur into a single golden smear of stone and vines. Do not do…
The Best Things to Do in Florence
There is a version of Florence you can see in a rushed day, ticking off the David and the dome and calling it done, and there is the Florence I love, which reveals itself slowly across churches and gardens and…
Where to Eat in Florence
Florentine food is not delicate. It is bread and beans and dark green olive oil, offal sandwiches eaten standing up, and a steak so large and so rare it is meant for sharing. Eat well here and you eat like…
How to Visit the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Duomo
Florence is where the Renaissance was born, and its three great sights, the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Duomo complex, hold the works that made it famous: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Michelangelo’s David, Brunelleschi’s impossible dome. They are also the…
Where to Stay in Florence
Florence is small, and that changes how you think about where to stay: almost anywhere in the historic centre puts you within a fifteen-minute walk of the Duomo, so the choice is less about distance and more about atmosphere. Do…
The Perfect Florence Itinerary (2 to 3 Days)
Florence rewards a plan. The city is small enough to walk end to end, but its greatest sights all require timed tickets, and getting those slots in the right order is the difference between a serene visit and a day…
The Best Photo Spots in Florence
Florence is one of the most photogenic cities in the world, a place where a terracotta dome floats above the rooftops and the river turns to gold at dusk. But the best pictures are not always where the crowds are,…
The Best Day Trips from Florence
One of the joys of Florence is that it is the gateway to Tuscany, and some of Italy’s most beautiful towns and vineyards sit within an hour or two. You could spend a week here and never leave the city…
