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A super-thick, juicy T-bone steak, best cut from snowy white Chiana cattle, simply brushed with olive oil and cracked pepper and grilled (medium-rare) over a wood fire. (A different cut is being used during the BSE scare.)

Medieval capital of the Mugello region, surrounded by Medici villas such as Cafaggiolo (see Villa di Cafaggiolo) and the Michelozzo-designed Castello del Trebbio (1461). In the town itself, painstakingly rebuilt after a 1919 earthquake, the 12th-century Pieve di San Lorenzo contains Renaissance altarpieces by Taddeo Gaddi and Bachiacca, apse murals by local Art Nouveau ceramics entrepreneur Galileo Chini (1906) and a damaged Madonna fresco by Giotto.

The Mazzetti family’s beautiful hand-hammered copperware.

A Medici cousin commissioned the Birth of Venus and Primavera for his villa.

Renaissance master of languid figures populating grand mythological scenes. He got caught up in Florence’s spiritual crisis, and is said to have tossed his own “blasphemous” canvases upon Savonarola’s “Bonfires of the Vanities” (see Florence). He spent the rest of his career painting vapid Madonnas and uninspired religious scenes.

One of Italy’s most powerful, complex reds, best with red meat or game. 100 percent Sangiovese Grosso (the wine was perfected accidentally when a blight killed all but this grape).

“Ugly but good” cakes, slightly chewy in a crisp shell.

The tiny historic centre shelters a good Museo d’Arte Sacra, with Sienese School works by Duccio, Sano di Pietro and Matteo di Giovanni, who also left a Madonna and Child in the 14th-century Santi Piero e Paolo church.

Conservative, static, stylized in Eastern iconographic tradition of the 9th–13th centuries AD. Almond faces, large eyes, robes pleated in gold cross-hatching.