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Cosimo I had Tribolo lay out the marvellous gardens in 1541, a combination of clipped hedges, ponds, ilex woods and statuary. Only the gardens are open.

Though the villa (1633–52) is currently closed, the 17thand 18th-century park, which is set into a steep hillside with statues and fountains aplenty, is still open to the public.

The statue-studded villa is 16th-century, though the mythological frescoes inside are late 18th. Juvarra’s Baroque gardens survive to the west side of the villa; the rest were landscaped in English style in the 19th century.

This most decorous of Medici mansions became a model for the ultimate Renaissance villa; it was designed by Giuliano da Sangallo and frescoed by the likes of Filippino Lippi and Pontormo.

Giuliano da Sangallo restructured (1480) this greatest Medici villa for Lorenzo the Magnificent. The ballroom is a pinnacle of Mannerist painting by Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto and Alessandro Allori. Francesco I and his second wife Bianca Cappello died here in 1587, apparently poisoned, and Vittorio Emanuele II used it for amorous assignations with his mistress.

This 16th-century villa was radically altered by Elisa Baciocchi to suit her 19th-century Napoleonic tastes. Only the 17th-century gardens are open.

The villa’s wines were the first to be called “Chianti” (in 1404). This is also where the real Mona Lisa was born (1479) and where, more recently, Much Ado about Nothing was filmed. Guided tours include wine samples; a full tour includes lunch.

In 1452, on the outskirts of this unassuming medieval hill town, a bastard child was born named Leonardo, who grew up to become one of the greatest scientific minds and artistic talents in history. The 11th-century Castello Guidi now houses a Museo Vinciano devoted to over 100 models of the master’s inventions. Up the road, set in an olive-clad farmscape that might have come from one of his works, is Leonardo’s simple casa natale (birthplace).

The world’s greatest alabaster craftsmen inhabit the loftiest hill town in Tuscany, whose stony medieval streets rise a cloud-scraping 555 m (1,820 ft) above the valley. This was one of the key cities in the Etruscan Dodecapolis confederation (see Etruscan Sights Around Cortona). The museum (see Volterra’s Museo Etrusco Guarnacci) is filled with finds unearthed as the erosion that is affecting one end of town slowly exposes ancient tombs.

Alabaster-carving is the local speciality of this windswept town with its medieval alleyways. The Museo Etrusco Guarnacci has one of Italy’s finest Etruscan collections, and the worn basalt heads adorning Porta all’Arco (4th century BC) represent Etruscan gods. The remains of a Roman theatre and baths are best seen from the viewing point off Via Guarnacci. The Pisan-striped 13th-century Duomo, with its meticulously carved and painted ceiling, houses Byzantine and Renaissance treasures, while the Pinacoteca boasts a fully intact Taddeo di Bartolo altarpiece (1411), Ghirlandaio’s final painting (Apotheosis of Christ , 1492), Luca Signorelli’s Annunciation (1491) and Rosso Fiorentino’s masterful early Mannerist Deposition (1521).