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The Best of Tuscany
The top destinations in Tuscany, Italy
Florence - Birthplace of the Renaissance, hometown to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Donatello, Giotto, and dozens other of Old Masters—and repository of Michelangelo's David, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, Brunelleschi's dome, and 1,001 other seminal works of art and architecture. To break up the Art History 101 nature of it you can peruse the artisan workshops of the Oltrarno, bargain in the San Lorenzo leather market, dig into a hearty meal of bistecca fiorentina steak with Chianti wine, and find a hotel for your own, perfect Room with a View moment... 
Pisa - Pisa's "Field of Miracles" is a grassy lawn sprinkled with some of the most gorgeous Romanesque architecture in Italy, from the Duomo (in which local luminary Galileo discovered his law of pendulum motion by watching the swinging chandeliers) to the statue-studded Baptistery (home of an intricately carved pulpit and near-perfect acoustics) to the famous church bell tower that just can't seem to stand up straight, giving pizza restaurants the world over something to print on their delivery boxes...
• Surveying Renaissance art at the Uffizi in Florence.
• Touring the castles and vineyards of the Chianti.
• Climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa above the Field of Miracles.
• Indulging in a 3-hour Tuscan dinner at Il Latini in Florence.
• Biking around Lucca atop its 16th century walls.
• Tasting wines in the Etruscan cellars of hilltown Montepulciano.
• Getting your Gothic art fix in Siena then strolling its shopping streets.
• Ascending the medieval stone skyscrapers of San Gimignano.
• Sampling Italy's best goat cheeses in Pienza, the perfect Renaissance village.
• Clambering up inside Brunelleschi's famous cathedral dome for a 369-view of Florence.
Siena - This Gothic antidote to Renaissance Florence is an overgrown hilltown of fine food, brick palaces, and a laid-back lifestyle. It's civic buildings and the mighty zebra-striped Duomo are filled with some of the greatest examples of late Gothic painting in Europe, and its streets are crowded with strolling locals, not blattering automobiles...
San Gimignano - The "Medieval Manhattan" is unique in Italy for being the only town to preserve more than a dozen of its medieval stone towers, holdovers from the bad old days of the Middle Ages bristling the skyline above vineyards producing one of Italy's finest white wines...
Lucca - Elegant city girdled by mighty 16th century brick bastions (the tops of which have now become a tree-shaded park encircling the city) where everyone gets around by bicycle. Fantastic Romanesque churches, Renaissance frescoes, fine opera, a piazza that takes its form from an ancient Roman amphitheater, and one-tenth the crowds of nearby Pisa...
Montepulciano - A postcard Tuscan hilltown of Renaissance palazzi lining the steeply sloping main drag and warrens of Etruscan-era tunnels burrowed through the rock underneath the palaces that now house some of the finest wine cellars in the world—and, more importantly, where the wine tastings are free...
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This material was last updated January 2009. All information was accurate at the time.
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