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Baratti Bay’s Iron Age role as port for Elba’s mines helped preserve Populonia’s Etruscan necropolis – under a slag heap. Half a dozen of the tombs are visitable, several almost intact. Museo Gasparri has many of the items excavated here.

Arrive early in the day for some incredible deals on high fashion in this back-of-a-factory complex just off the A1.

The mercantile tradition of this fast-growing city dates to 15th-century financial genius Francesco Daitini, famed “Merchant of Prato” and inventor of the promissory note. His frescoed Palazzo is one of the best preserved of its kind in Italy. Prato’s best art decorates the Duomo (see Prato’s Duomo), but the Galleria Communale has a lovely collection of early Renaissance polyptych altarpieces by such masters as Filippo Lippi and Bernardo Daddi. The half-ruined Castello dell’Imperatore (1420s), its ramparts and grassy interior now a city park, was built by Emperor Frederick II to defend the road from his German kingdom home to his lands in southern Italy.

When the Virgin was assumed, body and soul, to Heaven, Doubting Thomas was sceptical, so she handed him down her girdle as proof of her ascent. A Prato Crusader brought the belt back as the dowry of a Thomas descendant, it was encased in a glass and gold reliquary, and locked in the Duomo. Five times a year the bishop shows it to crowds thronging the piazza and church, and lets a line-up of the faithful kiss the case. A procession is then led by musicians dressed in Renaissance-style costumes.

Michelozzo’s outside pulpit ensures that crowds in the piazza are able to see the bishop display the Virgin’s girdle (see Virgin’s Girdle (Prato, Duomo)). The graceful frescoes in the choir by Filippo Lippi include a famous scene of Salomé presenting Herod with the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

This gastronomic address in Cortona serves nouvelle Tuscan dishes in a Renaissance palazzo setting (the frescoes are modern). Skip the unsatisfying house red for a bottle, though.

Loads of free samples of wine, grappa and salamis from the family farm. Atmospheric cellars contain an Etruscan tomb and medieval iron implements thrown into its well long ago.

This is little more than a modern yacht marina backed by some classy hotels with private beaches. Nearby there is riding on offer and one of Tuscany’s toughest, and prettiest, golf courses amid pine groves sloping down to the sea.

This one’s a favourite with locals. Sample three pastas with the chef’s tris di primi .

Took Perugino’s Umbrian style, and mixed it with Leonardo’s techniques and Michelangelo’s innovations to become supreme.