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The greatest gallery of Renaissance art on earth, a veritable living textbook of Western art’s most shining moments, showcasing masterpieces from Giotto and Botticelli through Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci to Titian, Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

Sightseeing is exhausting. Therefore, do as the Italians and take a nap after lunch.

Siena’s main passeggiata street (for evening promenading) is lined with palaces. Until Palazzo Pubblico was finished, the city council met in the piazza wedged between San Cristofano church and the 13th-century Palazzo Tolomei, now a bank. Further up the street, Piazza Salimbeni is flanked by Renaissance Palazzo Tantucci, Gothic Palazzo Salimbeni and Renaissance Palazzo Spannocchi. Together this group of buildings houses Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the city’s chief employer and oldest bank (established 1472), and its small, worthy collection of Sienese paintings.

Of the Versilia beach resorts, Viareggio has the most style and substance. The Liberty Style (Art Nouveau) of its many villas, cafés and buildings harkens back to the resort’s heyday in the 1920s. Its carnival parade (see Viareggio’s Carnevale), along the popular palm-shaded seafront promenade Viale G. Carducci, is renowned throughout Italy.

Southernmost Riviera-style resort on the coast, a mix of grand old buildings and simple tourist hotels. The promenade is lined with restaurants and shops on one side, and a crowded but sandy beach on the other (all stretches are privately run: you pay for a chair and umbrella). Not the cleanest water, but the calm sea and sandy beach are good for children.

This villa was rebuilt for Ferdinando I de’ Medici by Buontalenti (1595). Volterrano decorated the courtyard with the Glory of the Medici frescoes (1636–48). The English-style park is 17th-century.

The mansion is gone, but Buontalenti’s fountain-filled and statue-studded Pratolino park remains a favourite excursion from Florence.

Buontalenti laid out the vast Pratolino park for Francesco I de’ Medici (1568–81). The waterworks of luminous jet sprays and singing fountains have long fallen into disrepair, and the villa itself was demolished in 1824, but what remains is still spectacular, especially the figure of Appennino rising out of a lily pond.

A 16th-century Buontalenti villa for Ferdinando I. The multitude of chimneys and lack of gardens hint that this was a hunting lodge for winter sport. The basement houses a small museum of archaeology.

Tiny castle commissioned from Michelozzo (1451) by Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici. Open only for private functions, although you can visit the gardens by appointment.