Lonely Planet Florence & Tuscany

Nicola Williams, Virginia Maxwell

Description

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet's Florence & Tuscany is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Experience art-lover heaven at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, tempt your taste buds on a food tour around Tuscany, and climb San Gimignano's medieval towers - all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Florence & Tuscany and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's Florence & Tuscany: NEW pull-out, passport-size 'Just Landed' card with wi-fi, ATM and transport info - all you need for a smooth journey from airport to hotel Improved planning tools for family travellers - where to go, how to save money, plus fun stuff just for kids What's New feature taps into cultural trends and helps you find fresh ideas and cool new areas our writers have uncovered NEW Accommodation feature gathers all the information you need to plan your accommodation NEW Where to Stay in Florence map is your at-a-glance guide to accommodation options in each neighbourhood Colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sightseeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, people, music, landscapes, wildlife, cuisine, politics Covers Florence, Siena, Central Coast, Elba, Apuan Alps, Lucca, Pisa, San Gimignano, San Minato, Chianti, Arezzo, Garfagnana, and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet's Florence & Tuscany is our most comprehensive guide to Florence and Tuscany, and is perfect for discovering both popular and off-the-beaten-path experiences. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers.eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones) Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Sujets

• Tuscany
• Italy
• My Last Duchess

Informations

• Publié par: Lonely Planet
• Date de parution: 01 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781788687447
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 29 Mo

Extrait

Florence & Tuscany

Contents

PLAN YOUR TRIP

Welcome to Tuscany
Tuscany’s Top 15
Need to Know
First Time Tuscany
What’s New
If You Like…
Month by Month
Itineraries
Accommodation
Getting Around
Eat & Drink Like a Local
Activities
Family Travel
Regions at a Glance

ON THE ROAD

FLORENCE
Neighbourhoods at a Glance
Sights
Activities
Tours
Festivals & Events
Sleeping
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Lazy Days in Florence
SIENA & CENTRAL TUSCANY
Siena
Chianti
Greve in Chianti
Badia a Passignano
Wine Tour of Chianti
San Casciano in Val di Pesa
Castellina in Chianti
Radda in Chianti
Gaiole in Chianti
San Gimignano
Monteriggioni
Volterra
Val d’Orcia
Montalcino
Exploring the Val D’orcia
Pienza
Montepulciano
Chiusi
Medieval Masterpieces
SOUTHERN TUSCANY
Alta Maremma
Massa Marittima
Monte Amiata
Vetulonia
Città del Tufo
Pitigliano
Sovana
Sorano
Bassa Maremma
Grosseto
Parco Regionale della Maremma
Orbetello
Monte Argentario
CENTRAL COAST & ELBA
Livorno
Etruscan Coast
Castiglioncello
Bolgheri
San Vincenzo
Etruscan Wine & Oil Road
Suvereto
Golfo di Baratti
Tuscan Archipelago
Elba
Giglio, Gorgona & Pianosa
Capraia
Lazy Days in Elba
NORTHWESTERN TUSCANY
Pisa
Lucca
Pistoia
San Miniato
Apuane Alps & Garfagnana
Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
Barga
Bagni di Lucca
Carrara
Versilian Coast
Pietrasanta
Viareggio
Via Francigena
Lunigiana
Pontremoli
Why Pisa Leans
EASTERN TUSCANY
Arezzo
Sansepolcro
Casentino Valley
Poppi
Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi
Go Slow in The Valle del Casentino
Val di Chiana
Cortona
Magnificent Monasteries

UNDERSTAND

Understand Tuscany
History
The Tuscan Way of Life
The Tuscan Table
Tuscany on Page & Screen
Art & Architecture
Tuscan Artists
Tuscan Architecture

SURVIVAL GUIDE

Directory A–Z
Accessible Travel
Climate
Customs Regulations
Discount Cards
Electricity
Food
Health
Insurance
Internet Access
Legal Matters
LGBTIQ+ Travellers
Maps
Money
Post
Public Holidays
Safe Travel
Telephone
Time
Toilets
Tourist Information
Visas
Transport
Getting There & Away
Entering Tuscany
Air
Land
Sea
Getting Around
Air
Bicycle
Boat
Bus
Car & Motorcycle
Local Transport
Train
Language
Behind the Scenes
Our Writers
Welcome to Tuscany

With its lyrical landscapes, world-class art and a superb cucina contadina (farmer’s kitchen), the Tuscan experience is perfectly in symbiosis with the land.

Perfect Landscapes
Tuscany has a timeless familiarity with its iconic Florentine cathedral dome, gently rolling hills dipped in soft morning mist and sculptural cypress alleys. But then, this regione in central Italy is postcard material. Golden wheat fields, silver olive groves and pea-green vineyards marching in sharp terraced rows on hillsides form a graceful prelude to soul-soaring medieval hilltop villages, mountain ranges and fecund forests in the north, and a garland of bijou islands beaded along the coastal south. Get out, explore, hike and ding your bicycle bell, as this rousing landscape demands.

Living History
Ever since the Etruscans dropped by to party and stayed, Tuscany has seduced. The Romans stocked their grain silos here, Christians walked a medieval pilgrimage route, and Napoleon plundered art (and suffered terribly in exile in a neoclassical villa with fig trees and sea view on the island of Elba). Florence’s historic churches and monuments were a key stop for British aristocrats on 19th-century Grand Tours – and remain so. And at sundown when the river Arno turns pink, whether you like things old-fashioned and simple or boutique chic, this handsome city obliges.

Sensational Slow Food
No land is more caught up with the fruits of its fertile earth than Tuscany, a gourmet destination where locals spend an inordinate amount of time pondering and feasting on food and wine. Local, seasonal and sustainable is the Holy Trinity and Tuscans share enormous pride in the produce quality. Tuscan travel is grassroots: from wineries to taste blockbuster wines like Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano; to a family-run pastificio tradizionale where artisan pasta is cut by hand; or road trips in quest of the finest bistecca alla fiorentina (chargrilled T-bone steak).

An Artistic Powerhouse
Then there’s the art. The Etruscans indulged their fondness for a classy send-off with exquisite funerary objects, and the Romans left their usual legacy of monumental sculptures. But it was during the medieval and Renaissance periods that Tuscany struck gold, with painters, sculptors and architects creating world-class masterpieces. Safeguarded today in churches, museums and galleries all over the region, art in Tuscany is unmatched. Edgy street art in Florence and countryside sculpture parks bring the art scene right up to the 21st century.

San Gimignano , Tuscany | MASSIMAX/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Why I Love Florence & Tuscany
By Nicola Williams, Writer
Tuscany won me over at a farm in the Garfagnana. We were tucking into dinner when the farmer’s wife rushed in mid- secondi and urged us to join her in the stable to watch a calf being born. Later, when she joyfully declared, ‘We’ll call her Kaya after your daughter!’, I was speechless. So my nine-year-old now has a cow in Tuscany and I the honour of being privy to yet another intimacy of this wildly diverse, soulful, earth-driven region. This (and its truffles, Florence, aperitivo tradition, Renaissance art and Chianti wine) is why I love Tuscany.
For more, see Our Writers
Tuscany’s Top 15

The Duomo, Florence
The duomo (cathedral) isn’t just the most spectacular structure in Florence – it’s up there with Rome’s Colosseum and Pisa’s Leaning Tower as one of Italy’s most recognisable icons. Its polychrome marble facade is vast, striking and magnificent. But what makes the building so extraordinary is Filippo Brunelleschi’s distinctive red-brick dome, one of the greatest architectural achievements of all time. Scale the steep, narrow staircase to the base of the dome and peer down on the toylike cathedral interior far below – then climb some more for a stunning city panorama.

ANAMARIA MEJIA/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Galleria Degli Uffizi, Florence
Few art galleries evoke such an overwhelming sense of awe and wonderment as the world-class Uffizi , at home in a 16th-century Medici palazzo in Florence. Vast, labyrinthine, architecturally magnificent and rich in history, the building alone stuns. Add to this an art collection chock-full of Renaissance masterpieces, with works by Giotto, Botticelli, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio all jostling for the limelight, and you’ll know you’ve arrived in art-lover heaven. Allow ample time to savour slowly, in several bite-sized visits if need be.

KAHRAMANKAVAS/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Val d’Orcia
Cruise in second gear on quiet, gently rolling roads along this unassuming valley laced with vines, the medieval abbeys of Sant’Antimo and San Galgano, splendidly Renaissance Pienza and the blockbuster wine towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino. Explore abbeys where pilgrims once overnighted en route along the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome, indulge in a long, lazy Brunello-fuelled lunch and congratulate yourself on uncovering one of Tuscany’s finest road trips – there’s good reason why the Val d’Orcia is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

DAN74/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Piazza del Campo, Siena
Horses race around it twice a year, local teens hang out on it, tourists inevitably gasp on seeing it for the first time – Siena’s strangely sloping, perfectly paved central piazza is the city’s geographical and historical heart, staked out since the 12th century. Presided over by the graceful Palazzo Pubblico (pictured) and fringed with bustling cafe terraces, Piazza del Campo is the finest spot in Siena to promenade, take photographs and lap up the soul-soaring magic of this unique, gloriously Gothic and architecturally harmonious city.

MILA ATKOVSKA/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Chianti
This ancient wine region is the Tuscany you have seen in postcards, where cypress alleys give way to pea-green vineyards and silver olive groves, honey-coloured stone farmhouses and secluded Renaissance villas built for Florentine and Sienese nobility. Luxurious accommodation and the very best of modern Tuscan cuisine provide the right ingredients for an idyllic short escape – peppered with romantic walks and road trips along narrow green lanes to wine cellars for tastings of Italy’s best-known wine, the ruby-red, violet-scented Chianti Classico.

MAU47/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Flavours of Tuscany
‘To cook like your mother is good, to cook like your grandmother is better’, says the Tuscan proverb. Indeed, in foodie Tuscany age-old recipes are passed between generations and form the backbone of the local cuisine – a highlight of any Tuscan trip. Devour feisty T-bone steak in a family-run trattoria such as Mario near Florence’s Mercato Centrale (pictured), savour modern Tuscan fare amid a sea of ancient Antinori vines at Rinuccio 1180 in Chianti, shop at local markets bursting with seasonal produce, and wish fellow diners ‘Buon appetito!’

BAKSHEEVA IULIIA/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Medieval Festivals
Throw yourself into local life with an exuberant and eye-catching festival – a compelling snapshot of Tuscan culture, washed down with much food, wine and merrymaking. Come the warm days of spring and summer, almost every town hosts its own fest: locals don medieval costumes and battle with giant crossbows or lances, often reenacting ancient political rivalries between different contrade (neighbourhoods). The prize? Wonderful trophies evocative of m