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Florence’s sculpture gallery, installed in a medieval town hall and prison, contains early Michelangelos, Mannerist Giambologna’s gravity-defying Flying Mercury (1564) and the city’s best Donatello collection, including Davids in marble and bronze (the first nude since antiquity) and a puzzled St George (1416).

Terracotta-producing town with a miracle-heavy Renaissance Collegiata church. Flanking the high altar are chapels designed by Michelozzo and decorated with Luca della Robbia terracottas. The right one contains a fragment of the True Cross, the left an icon of the Virgin (supposedly painted by St Luke), which was buried here during the early Christian persecutions and ploughed up by an ox while the church foundations were being dug. Also on view are fine Baroque paintings and a Mannerist Giambologna crucifix.

This hilly isle off l’Argentario (ferries from Porto Santo Stefano) has a medieval hamlet Castello above the docks, a beach at the port and an even better low-key resort and beach on the bay at Campese. Ansonico, the local wine, is known mainly to the habitués who crowd here on summer weekends.

St Francis himself founded this clifftop monastery, and a Baroque frescoed corridor passes the now-enclosed cave where he slept. At the end of the corridor is the Cappella delle Stimmate, which was built over the site where the saint received his stigmata in 1224. For a sense of the saint’s La Verna unencumbered by buildings, follow the path to Sasso Spico, another rocky outcrop where the holy man prayed.

The ultimate Renaissance Man: a genius painter, inventor and proto-scientist, with a penchant for experimentation but a short attention span (he left much unfinished). His sfumato technique of blurring outlines and hazy backgrounds lent his works tremendous depth and realism.

One of Leonardo da Vinci’s first paintings, produced between 1472 and 1475 apparently while still a student in Verrocchio’s workshop. It displays his early mastery of sfumato technique and Renaissance penchant for the Classical.

Though Florence had already subjugated Pisa in the 16th century, Pisa’s silty harbour and unsure loyalties prompted Grand Duke Cosimo I to hire Buontalenti to build him a brand-new port from scratch. Livorno and Pisa have hated each other ever since.

Livorno is Tuscany’s second city, but short on sights when compared with, say, Pisa. There is just the somewhat wishfully named Venezia Nuova (“new Venice”) canal district, Pietro Tacca’s Mannerist masterpiece Monumento ai Quattro Mori (1623–6) at the port, and the Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori. The latter is devoted to native son Fattori, chief painter of the 19th-century Macchiaioli (Tuscan “impressionists”). Artist Amedeo Modigliani was also born here (but worked in Paris), as was composer Pietro Mascagni.

Most beloved of the Medici. A devout humanist and patron of the arts (and a fair poet himself) who, alongside many accomplishments of his own, sponsored Michelangelo’s early career. Able ruler of the city.

Elegant small city of avid cyclists, church concerts, Romanesque façades and exquisite Renaissance sculpture. Another one of Tuscany’s Top 10.

San Martino is a masterpiece of Romanesque stacked open arcades, stuffed with sculpture from Gothic reliefs to works by two great 15th-century talents, local Matteo Civitale and Sienese Jacopo della Quercia. (see Lucca)