DK Travel : Tuscany

Limiting the choice of prime sights is not an easy task in a land as rich and varied as Tuscany. Its storybook landscape is home to medieval hill towns, fabled wines and, as crucible of the Renaissance, an unrivalled collection of artistic masterpieces. Here are the best of the best.

Florence’s Science Museum

The instruments displayed here are often as beautiful as they are scientifically significant. Exhibits include a mechanical “calculator” made of engraved disks, a perpetual motion machine and the telescopes with which Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter.
Florence’s Scoppio del Carro

White oxen pull a firework-laden cart from the baptistry’s Gates of Paradise to the Duomo. During Easter mass, a mechanical dove sails on a wire down the nave and through the door to ignite the cart in an explosion of noise and colour.
Florence’s Uffizi

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus , Leonardo’s Annunciation and Michelangelo’s Holy Family are just three of the masterpieces that make this the top sight in all of Tuscany (see The Uffizi, Florence).
Fonterutoli (Chianti)

Highly regarded estate in the Mazzei family since 1435, centred around a medieval village with a laid-back bar (in the osteria) for tippling. Recent vintages of the Chianti, Siepi and Brancaia have won the top Italian rankings.
Forisportam, Lucca

This is another good shop for presents: you’ll pay decent prices for highly decorated Renaissance-style ceramics from Montelupo and Deruta.
Forte dei Marmi

Tiny resort favoured by jet-setters. The village is set back amid the pine forest, the beach lined with colourful little beach cabanas.
Forte dei Marmi

One of the string of impeccable, regimented-umbrella beaches along the northern Versilia, Forte dei Marmi is built around a 15th-century marble port. It stands out for its fine sands, Grand Ducal fort (1788) and the summer villas of well-to-do Italians and minor nobility hidden amid the pines.
Fra Angelico (1395–1455)

A devout Dominican friar, Beato (Italians honour him as beatified) Angelico’s origins as a manuscript illuminator informed his art. But his work is grounded in the Renaissance precepts of naturalism and perspective.
Fra Angelico’s Annunciation

This version of the Annunciation was painted in 1442 by Fra Angelico for his own monastery. The sense of space is emphasized by showing the room behind the loggia, and the lush woods in the distance beyond.
Galileo

Cosimo II protected the iconoclastic scientist from the Inquisition, bargaining his death sentence down to excommunication and house arrest.