The Casentino area of Tuscany, stretching to the east of Florence, is often overlooked in favor of the more famous Chianti zone nearby. It's a secluded place, perfect for those who have already visited the well-known Tuscan towns and seek something different. Here the visitor can discover one of Europe’s purest forested areas, take in the spirituality of ancient monasteries,
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Fall Festivals in Tuscany
Fantastic Fall Festivals in Tuscany Tuscany brims with abundance in Autumn, with the grape harvest in the early part of the season and the new olive oil pressed in the later part of the season. For the updated version of this post go to my Substack.
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A Special Monastery in Tuscany
La Verna: a contemplative Tuscan sanctuary For the updated version of this post, go to my Substack
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Wild Tuscany, A Visit to Magical Maremma
The Maremma, a region on the southern Tuscan coast, is the wild side of Tuscany. With a rough reputation as a place of bandits and malarial swamps a few hundred years ago, it has become a fashionable place in the last twenty years, while still remaining unspoiled. It gives me a wild, expansive, anything-is-possible feel. The Etruscans were the first settlers of this area and
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Tuscan Chocolate Festivals
March is Italian chocolate madness month and I’ve become a chocolate devotee in Italy. I went racing over to Florence in early March simply because a chocolate festival was happening there, in the lovely Piazza Santissima Annuziata. Toward the end of March we had one here in Lucca, in charming Piazza San Frediano. At these festivals you will find Italian artisanal chocolate
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Tuscany off the beaten path: The Svizzera Pesciatina
Google the Svizzera Pesciatina and not much will show up. These small stone villages are in the hills above Pescia, and I'd not heard of them until I started living in Lucca. My recent visit to them sure felt like Tuscany off the beaten path. Pescia, a simple tow east of Lucca, suffered quite a bit of damage in World War II, and it's not on the tourist track. Above Pescia,
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Where to Have The Most Magical Christmas Eve
Christmas in Italy On Christmas Eve in the village of Abbadia San Salvatore I felt like Lucy walking through the wardrobe. It was like I had entered a place of magical forest folk from pre-Christian times, as I walked the ancient twisting pathways of this mountain town during its bonfire festival. (Called Fiaccole della Notte di Natale in Italian.) The night begins at 6:00
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Memoirs about Italy (And the marketing phenomenon of the word Tuscan)
The word Tuscan has became so overly marketed in the US that a friend of mine said, "When I hear the word Tuscan, I think bull shit." Behind every "Tuscan cheese stick" in middle America, is the marketing phenomenon of Frances Mayes' books on Tuscany. After seven years of success with her first books, Drexel Heritage introduced a "Frances Mayes at Home in Tuscany"
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The Santa Fe of Italy–Don’t Miss This Artistic Tuscan Town
Pietrasanta may be called The Little Athens of Italy but I would call it The Santa Fe of Italy. When I lived in Santa Fe I loved the Canyon Road Art Walk that happens every fourth Friday evening. Santa Fe's historic Canyon Road goes back to the mid-eighteenth century is lined with about 130 galleries, in colorful adobe buildings. Rising beyond the road's end are the Sangre
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What you need to know about hiking the Apuan Alps
Disclaimer: This is not a review of Apuan Alps. This is simply my experience summiting one of them. The story represented is personal and is not intended to malign the location where the story takes place. The mountain near Lucca called Pania della Croce is the fourth highest peak of the Apuan Alps, and is referred to as "The Apuan Queen." It has hefty rounded sides that
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Where to Spend Liberation Day in Italy
A fitting place to go on Liberation Day in Italy is the small hamlet of Sant' Anna di Stazzema. On an August morning in 1944, German troops entered Sant'Anna di Stazzema and committed what is probably the worst war crime on Italian soil, executing all people present that day in the hamlet, then killing the animals and burning the
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