Florence Guides & Tuscany Drivers

10/08/2024

Overview of Tuscany - Under The Tuscan Sun

Tuscany's rolling hills are sewn with cypress trees, lush vines and olive groves, making way here and there for sleepy villages and medieval hill towns. The area rests languidly in the middle of the Italian peninsula, with parts stretching to the coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Meandering through the Tuscan landscape from Florence to Pisa and soaking its thirsty banks is the Arno River.
Akin to the gentle flow of a river is the ebb of life in the region, with people working the fields in much the same way as their ancestors did before them, producing some of Italy's finest wines and olive oils. From this same landscape emerges a profusion of art and architecture that has grafted Italy onto the world's cultural map. Tuscany was the birthplace of the Renaissance, a period of unprecedented innovation in art, architecture and humanist scholarship. The grandeur of the High Renaissance was enjoyed during the Medici family's reign, when they commissioned the art and architecture that lives on within the elegant precincts of Florence.

Florence is one of the most popular cities in Italy for tourists, and is widely considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It's a dreamy destination made up of cobbled streets, picturesque piazzas and a wealth of Renaissance art and architecture, boasting some of the best galleries and museums in Italy. It's also a conspicuously Tuscan city, with all the sleepy charm of the region and many worthwhile excursions into the countryside.

24/03/2024

When the Traveller is slave of the Media:

We are looking for a flexible itinerary to visit Siena & San Gimignano on 29 April and visit Pisa (quick one) & Lucca on 30 April.Just to be clear, we are not looking for a tour guide for Florence. Instead, we need a car/SUV and a local English-speaking tour guide to drive us to visit Siena & San Gimignano on 29 April and to Pisa & Lucca on 30 April.We are also open to other suggestions to visit towns n villages in d Tuscan area along d way if time permits.

Pls also suggest places where we can have authentic lunches in a rustic Tuscan village on a hill, like what I saw on Stanley Tucci's In Search of Italy.

19/03/2024

19/03/2024

MONTERIGGIONI: located just north of Siena, it was founded in the second decade of the thirteenth century by the Republic of Siena, with the main aim of creating a defensive outpost against its rival Florence. For centuries, therefore, the settlement fully carried out the function for which it was created, repelling sieges and attacks from time to time. Its military function ceased from the mid-sixteenth century, when the entire Sienese state was annexed to the Florentine one.

Its city walls embrace the top of a hill with a perimeter of approximately 570 meters and is equipped with fourteen rectangular towers protruding from the external curtain. The grandeur of the towers must have been known even in the Middle Ages, so much so that it suggested to Dante a famous similarity with the Giants placed in Hell (Inf., ###I, vv. 40-44). Inside the village, where traces of the ancient structures survive here and there, the building of greatest interest is represented by the Parish Church of S. Maria Assunta, dating back to the first half of the 13th century and renovated inside in the modern era.