Hidden Tuscany


Book Description

Beyond the usual tourist destinations, the often overlooked western portion of Tuscany is rich with history, cuisine, and scenery begging to be explored. John Keahey encourages travelers to abandon itineraries and let the grooves in the road and the curves of the coast guide your journey instead. From coastal towns to vineyards farther inland to the Tuscan archipelago, Keahey reminds us that each village, city, and island has its own unique story to tell.




Tuscan Cities


Book Description

Tuscany is arguably the most alluring and iconic region of Italy. It is a place of breathtaking natural beauty, imbued with an ancient and rich cultural heritage that, as Shelley's 'paradise of exiles', has inspired centuries of artists, scientists writers, poets and travellers. For William Dean Howells, American Consul to Venice for four years, Italy was the country that fashioned his prose and fostered his love of travel. One winter he travelled the length and breadth of Tuscany, from Florence and Fiesole to Siena, Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia and Prato. Immersing himself in all things Tuscan, he describes in compelling detail the daily life - funerals and weddings, military marches and lovers' trysts - of a place that was bursting with life and endlessly fascinating to him. He muses on the character of the Italians that he meets, revelling in their sense of drama, their sentimentality and impulsiveness and vividly resurrects the artistic, tempestuous, world-changing history of Tuscany, from its mysterious, ancient beginnings to the birth of the Renaissance and its status as cultural soul of Italy. Tuscan Cities, a passionate Italophile's glowing tribute, cannot fail to inspire anyone who has ever travelled to or loved Tuscany as Howells did.




Within Tuscany


Book Description

In an informative and entertaining book, sculptor Matthew Spender takes readers on a captivating tour of his adopted homeland, Tuscany--a region unsurpassed in a richness of history, artistry, and culture. "A rare delight".--The Boston Globe. Photographs.




Some Tuscan Cities


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Under the Tuscan Sun


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.




1,000 Places to See Before You Die


Book Description

The world’s bestselling travel book is back in a more informative, more experiential, more budget-friendly full-color edition. A #1 New York Times bestseller, 1,000 Places reinvented the idea of travel book as both wish list and practical guide. As Newsweek wrote, it “tells you what’s beautiful, what’s fun, and what’s just unforgettable— everywhere on earth.” And now the best is better. There are 600 full-color photographs. Over 200 entirely new entries, including visits to 28 countries like Lebanon, Croatia, Estonia, and Nicaragua, that were not in the original edition. There is an emphasis on experiences: an entry covers not just Positano or Ravello, but the full 30-mile stretch along the Amalfi Coast. Every entry from the original edition has been readdressed, rewritten, and made fuller, with more suggestions for places to stay, restaurants to visit, festivals to check out. And throughout, the book is more budget-conscious, starred restaurants and historic hotels such as the Ritz, but also moderately priced gems that don’t compromise on atmosphere or charm. The world is calling. Time to answer.




Tuscan Spaces


Book Description

An important locus for English-speaking writers, the region of Tuscany is also well represented in the Italian literary canon. In Tuscan Spaces, Silvia Ross focuses on constructions of Tuscany in twentieth-century Italian literature and juxtaposes them with English prose works by such authors as E.M. Forster and Frances Mayes to expose the complexity of literary representation centred on a single milieu. Ross uses the works of writers such as Federigo Tozzi, Aldo Palazzeschi, Vasco Pratolini, and Elena Gianini Belotti, to seek out alternative visions of Tuscan space and emphasizes that each author fashions the region in a manner which reflects their personal poetics, background, and experiences. Theories of cultural geography, space, travel, and narrative contribute to Ross's consideration of the dualisms commonly employed in writings about Tuscany, such as country/city, nature/culture, female/male, and self/other, all of which are in turn affected by her interrogation of the local/foreign opposition that underlies the study as a whole.







In Tuscany


Book Description