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A 15-year restoration of the choir’s Legend of the True Cross (1448–66), the greatest fresco cycle by Piero della Francesca, has revived the vitality and vibrancy of this masterpiece.

Sample refined cooking in a 15th-century palazzo. Sample, too, the enormous wine cellar, which ranges from little-known local labels to grand foreign wines.

Treat yourself – or a (very good) friend – to a present from this 1870 shop, selling classy Italian kitchenware ranging from contemporary porcelain to Alessi gadgets.

Within its 14th-century walls, next to the travertine Romanesque Collegiata, Asciano’s Museo d’Arte Sacra contains Sienese works by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Segna di Buonaventura and Francesco di Valdambrino. The minuscule Museo Etrusco’s 3rd- to 5th-century BC painted vases are installed in a deconsecrated church.

The best of both worlds: a gorgeous beach-side villa, plus access, via an under-the-road tunnel, to the modern hotel Augustus, with its pool, restaurant and live music club.

The Falvo brothers were key in reviving the quality and raising the status of Vino Nobile in the 1990s. The huge estate also produces vintages made with Merlot and Cabernet, and one of Tuscany’s finest Vin Santoe. A classy show-room/free tasting bar is in Montepulciano.

Classy, vaguely medieval showroom and free tasting bar for one of the top wine producers in Tuscany.

Solid Tuscan and Italian dishes at the best restaurant in the historic town centre.

Little more than a square of houses around a vast, Medici-built portico and basin steaming with naturally carbonated, volcanically heated waters. St Catharine bathed here for her scrofula (lymphatic tuberculosis), Lorenzo the Magnificent for his troublesome arthritis, but sadly the pool is no longer suitable for swimming.