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Medieval ambience, easygoing service and modern Tuscan cooking – including a new Italian trend of carefully pairing each main course with a side dish.

Cosy trattoria where you pay for what you drink of the house Chianti; the comfort food includes grifi e polenta (fatty veal stomach in polenta).

Solid Tuscan dishes served under beamed ceilings (avoid the modern room to the right) or on the piazza outside.

Since 1846 this has been the Lucca café of choice for musical and literary luminaries. The interiors are of the period, and the food and pastries are rather fine.

If you love fish, you’ll get large portions of it here.

The Antinori Marquises have been making wine since 1385, producing more than 15 million bottles annually of some of Italy’s most highly ranked and consistently lauded wines. You can sample their vini at Florence’s Cantinetta Antinori (see Cantinetta Antinori).

Since 1858 this shop has been making the best cantucci (biscuits) in Italy. Buy some to take back home, along with a bottle of vin santo .

An Etruscan city, then ancient Roman pottery centre, Arezzo was later home to Guido Monaco, who invented modern musical notation in the 11th century, the poet Petrarch (1304–74) and Giorgio Vasari (1512–74), architect and author of the first art history text, Lives of the Artists .

The town’s centre is the broad, sloping Piazza Grande. The bell-tower, façade and medieval Calendar reliefs of the 12th-century Santa Maria della Pieve are Lombard-Romanesque style, but the altarpiece (1320) is pure Sienese Gothic courtesy of Pietro Loren-zetti. The Duomo has excellent stained-glass windows by French master Guillaume de Marcillat, and a fresco by Piero della Francesca. The 14th-century San Francesco is graced with Piero’s recently restored Legend of the True Cross (1448–66).

Italy’s top monthly antiques market. Over 600 dealers crowding the Piazza Grande and streets around it.

A horseback jousting contest played in medieval costume on the sloping Piazza Grande. It’s the only joust in Tuscany where the target can hit back – the stylized “Saracen” is allowed to turn and knock the rider as he gallops past.