Florence sits at the centre of a region where good day trips are unusually easy to arrange. Chianti is 30 minutes south by car; Pisa and Lucca are an hour by train; Siena and Montalcino take a little longer. And in the other direction, just north of Tuscany, the high-speed train puts Bologna and the […]
Six Day Trips from Florence: Chianti, Val d’Orcia, Siena, Lucca, Pisa and Emilia-Romagna Read Post »
Dario Cecchini is an eighth-generation butcher working from the same shop his family has occupied in Panzano in Chianti since the 18th century. He is probably the most written-about butcher in the world — featured in Netflix’s Chef’s Table, Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy, and countless food publications — but the reason people travel to
Dario Cecchini: The Butcher of Panzano in Chianti Read Post »
Lardo di Colonnata IGP is one of the most misunderstood products in Italian cured-meat culture. Outside Italy it is often dismissed as “cured fat” — an accurate description that tells you almost nothing useful about what it actually is or how it tastes. Within Italy it is considered one of the finest expressions of the
Lardo di Colonnata IGP: Italy’s Most Misunderstood Cured Meat Read Post »
Lucca is a walled city in western Tuscany that most visitors skip in favour of Florence or Siena. The 4.2-kilometre circuit of Renaissance walls — intact, walkable, cycleable on top — encloses one of the best-preserved medieval centres in Italy: narrow streets, Roman-era piazzas, Romanesque churches, and a pace that the city’s better-known neighbours lost
Visiting Lucca: The Walls, the Towers, and Why It’s Worth a Full Day Read Post »
San Gimignano is a small medieval hill town in the province of Siena, about 55 km south of Florence. Its skyline — defined by 14 surviving towers from an original 72 — is one of the most recognisable in Tuscany. The town is compact enough to cover on foot in half a day, and the
San Gimignano: Towers, Vernaccia Wine and What to See in the Historic Centre Read Post »
The Val d’Orcia — the landscape that surrounds Pienza and gives the cheese its character The Val d’Orcia south of Siena is one of the most distinctive landscapes in Italy — wide clay valleys, rolling hills, isolated farmhouses, rows of cypress trees on ridgelines. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape and the
Pecorino di Pienza: The Sheep’s Milk Cheese of the Val d’Orcia Read Post »