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The Pinacoteca boasts a comprehensive collection of Sienese painting (though the masterpieces of the school are housed elsewhere). Among the earlier gems, seek out various 14th-century Madonnas by Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti. Compare Beccafumi’s cartoons (full-sized preparatory sketches on cartone , or “large paper”) for the Duomo’s floor panels and his Mannerist Christ Descending into Limbo to rival Sodoma’s High Renaissance works.

The hometown of Pinocchio author Carlo “Collodi” Lorenzini has a small theme park.

Tuscany’s favourite daytrip offers more than just a leaning tower. The gorgeous collection of Romanesque buildings called the “Field of Miracles” ranks among Tuscany’s Top 10 sights (see Campo dei Miracoli, Pisa).

An ancient Roman town of metal workers – the industry’s thin daggers, which evolved into handguns, were called pistole after the city. It is an artistic crossroads where the striking Romanesque stripes in San Giovanni Fuoricivitas and the Duomo (see Pistoia’s Duomo) meet the Florentine Renaissance glazed terracottas festooning the Ospedale del Ceppo. Gothic art comes in the form of colourful 1372 frescoes covering the Cappella del Tau, and a Giovanni Pisano carved pulpit (1298–1301) in the church of Sant’Andrea.

In the heart of the Etruscan Maremma, surrounded by valleys full of ancient tombs, Pitigliano is built upon an outcrop of tufa rock. In fact, it is difficult to tell where the cliff sides end – pockmarked as they are with cellar windows – and the walls of the houses and castle begin.

Etruscan Pitigliano seems to grow right out of its rocky terrain. This hill town’s greatest sight is its medieval self, though the Palazzo Orsini castle (a 13th-century structure, enlarged by Giuliano da Sangallo) houses a few modest museums of local Etruscan finds (“Museo Civico Archeologico”) and its own rooms (“Palazzo Orsini”). The synagogue offers tours (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) of Pitigliano’s significant Jewish heritage, which all but vanished with Nazi deportations.

This brawny Mannerist mansion served as Florence’s royal home from 1560 until the 1860s, when Florence did a stint as Italy’s capital. Backed by the elaborate Boboli Gardens, the palace’s seven museums include the excellent Galleria Palatina of late Renaissance/early Baroque painting.

The shops hanging from both sides of Taddeo Gaddi’s 1354 “old bridge” have housed gold- and silversmiths since Ferdinando I evicted the butchers in the 16th century (his private corridor from the Uffizi to the Pitti passed overhead, and he couldn’t stand the smell). Even the Nazis, blowing up bridges to slow the Allied advance, found the span too beautiful to destroy and instead took down the buildings at either end.

Stranded up a northern spit of Tuscany is Pontrémoli and its Museo delle Statue-Stele. Some of the museum’s 20-odd prehistoric menhirs (tombstone-like slabs) date from 3000 BC, the more elaborate ones from 200 BC.

The sweetest Casentino hill town, dominated by the Castello dei Conti Guidi (1274–1300), built by Lapo and Arnolfo di Cambio, the latter architect of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Inside is a chapel, frescoed by Taddeo Gaddi.