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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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How limiting to be visiting a place based on just one world-famous site in order to take a quick snapshot to post on social media and then leave. This is often the case for Pisa, known the world over for its Leaning Tower, and many do pass by this Tuscan town just to see-photograph that.  However, with its rich past as a powerful Maritime Republic...

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For Americans, this summer has been filled with a strong dose of travel FOMO. While we can understand the remaining need for travel restrictions, travel lovers’ Instagram feeds are still filled with Europeans jetsetting across the continent to near-empty destinations. Places like the French Riviera and Italian coast haven’t been this crowd free in...

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‘Florence is a very noir city,” a film-maker once told me 10 years ago, on learning that I wrote thrillers set there. (The sixth in my Florentine detective series, The Viper, is out now.) We were looking down on lovely Piazza Santa Croce, scene of a thousand years of bloody jousts and tournaments and the staggeringly violent Florentine football, Ca...

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A village in southern Italy that offered tourists free lodgings to boost the local economy has been inundated with 8000 holiday requests from across the world. At the end of June, the remote medieval hamlet of San Giovanni in Galdo, around 90 miles northeast of Naples, decided to offer travellers a free one-week stay in one of its quaint village ho...

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Even though I’m not venturing outside Tuscany I am highlighting a lesser discovered appellation in the southern part called Montecucco.  Located in the Maremma, northeast of Grosseto not too far from the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The hills are set inland at the foothills of Monte Amiato, an extinct volcano.  Not too distinct are also the sangiovese based ap...

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Siena has unveiled the extraordinary inlaid marble mosaic floors of its cathedral in as part of an eagerly-awaited annual event. The magnificent marble floor, covered with masonite sheeting for the rest of the year, can be visited from today until 7 October. Visitors, who will be obliged to follow precautions to contain the spread of covid-19, will...

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