Italian Villas

We recently spent a week in Italy, but only a day in Tuscany. Next time, we will find one of those luxurious Italian villas , and spend a whole week relaxing and soaking up Tuscany.

Tuscany

To backdrop to Florence wealth of artistic and architectural heritage are elegant and refined streets and squares that give the impression of being on a medieval or Renaissance stage set.

This is equally true of:

• Siena with its famous Piazza del Campo set withing a ring of palaces in a triumph of medieval and gothic architecture;
• Pisa with its Piazza dei Miracoli, a scenographic green space in which rises majestically the renowned Leaning Tower , sometimes used to symbolise Italy in tourist pictures;
• Lucca , with its still intact medieval village structure;
• Arezzo , lying on a fan of hills;
• Grosseto , its old centre surrounded by the Medici walls.

Tuscany also possesses a natural and enviromental heritage of considerable worth. Sea coasts and mountains, rivers, lakes, plains and hills are surprising for their variety and the rapid succession of landscapes that overlook delighful locations. The Chianti hills feature long rows of wines alternated with olive groves and broken by oak woods. Also characteristic of the Tuscan landscape are the rows of cypress trees that run majestic and elegant. Maremma may appear harsh, but it bears witness to the Etruscan civilisation and offers a coastline rich in lagoons and nature parks.

(Contents taken from "Destination Toscana" by ENIT)