Italy · The rolling hills
Beyond Florence lies the Tuscany of the imagination: a landscape of rolling hills combed with vines and olive trees, lines of dark cypress climbing to honey-colored farmhouses, and medieval towns crowning the ridges. It is a region made for slowing down, for long lunches and longer drives between one beautiful view and the next.
Siena gathers around the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, one of the finest squares in Italy, while San Gimignano bristles with the medieval towers that earned it the nickname the Manhattan of Tuscany. Between them spreads the Chianti, its cellar doors pouring Sangiovese among the vines, and to the south the Val d'Orcia unfolds in the cypress lanes and golden fields that define the postcard Tuscan view.
This is country best explored by car, with an agriturismo as your base. We map out the cellar visits and hill towns, book the tastings ahead, and leave plenty of room to simply wander, because in Tuscany the road between the sights is half the pleasure.
