Tuscany is the landscape the rest of the world pictures when it imagines Italy.

This is where the Renaissance was born, in Florence, and where Etruscan tombs still hide beneath tufa cliffs at Sovana and Pitigliano. The land changes as you cross it, from the marble-veined Apuan Alps above Carrara to the clay-stripped crete senesi south of Siena and the long Tyrrhenian beaches of the Versilia.

The Tuscan character is unhurried and quietly proud. Meals run to pici and pappardelle, peppery Pecorino Toscano, finocchiona salami and a glass of Vin Santo at the end. Even the smallest borgo keeps its piazza, its Romanesque church, its evening passeggiata.

Come in late spring or early autumn, when the light turns the hills gold and the wine harvest, the vendemmia, draws villages into the vineyards.