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Saturday morning, on a little cobblestoned street outside a wine cellar in Italy’s Chianti region, people are gathering with their glasses at the tasting table. Renzo Marinai vineyard and agriturismo snuggles into the hills of the Conca d'Oro–the “golden basin”–Tuscany’s answer to Burgundy’s Cote d’Or. Once a heartland for ripening wheat, the sun-d...

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When you walk in Florence you are always fascinated by this city, because it was the cradle of famous people, Italian literature and art. Florence is full of museums, galleries and places that will leave you breathless for their history and their beauty. Towards the middle of the 16th century, there was a need to display the works of art in a priva...

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Pecorino is an exquisite product with a long tradition. Ancient testimonies still exist that praise its qualities: in older times it was called “Marzolino” and in 1475 the humanist Bartolomeo Platina acclaimed it as the best cheese in Italy. In 1832, Ignazio Malenotti, a member of the Linnean Society of Paris, published the “Shepherd’s Handbook” in...

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Un’astronave interrata nel Chianti fiorentino. Una tartaruga nel cuore della campagna umbra. Una bolla di vetro sui colli piemontesi. Dalla Maremma alle Langhe passando per il Veneto e la Sicilia, il fenomeno delle cantine d'autore ha conquistato tante delle case vinicole del Bel Paese. Le nuove ‘cattedrali del vino’, firmate dai grandi nomi dell’a...

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Sometimes, the most rewarding surprises are found in a city’s ‘minor’ sights. Florence has plenty of world-famous sights everybody flocks to, and we understand why, but we also like to make the case for the lesser-known spots, which often reveal a lot about a place in original ways. That’s the case for these five little-known or little-visited muse...

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At the height of Italy’s lockdown in April factories were shuttered across the country. But in Piombino Dese, a small town about 20 miles outside of Venice, the hulking glass-cutting machines at the Stevanato Group kept whirring along, spitting out millions of ampoules and syringes. Hundreds of employees donned face masks to work around the clock i...

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I was a bookish and kind of nerdy 15-year-old in suburban Pennsylvania when a cataclysmic flood made a muddy mess of Florence in 1966. The stories and photos in the National Geographic and Life magazines that arrived in my parents’ mailbox transported me there in my adolescent imagination. When I viewed a black-and-white documentary on PBS, directe...

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Last year, I was fortunate enough to be one of those lucky foodies when I spent a week experiencing the all-inclusive Cook in Tuscany, an indulgent experience that immerses its guests in all things Tuscan. As a professional travel blogger I have the enviable job of traveling the world and trying new experiences. I also have no shortage of friends a...

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Twelve villas and two ornamental gardens scattered throughout the Tuscan region constitute a Unesco World Heritage site that testifies to the influence exercised by the Medici family on modern European culture through the patronage of the arts.  Built between the 15th and 17th centuries, they represent an original system of rural buildings designed...

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When we think expats in Tuscany, we think of Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun; we think of the English patient in the gorgeous Villa San Girolamo and we, decide, pretty quickly, that’s it’s out the realm of reality and the budget of the average sea changer.  But there is a part of Tuscany that doesn’t cross most expats’, or even, most tourists’...

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