One of the things that annoy us Tuscans to no end is that most of what people know about our land is just wrong. The image that comes to mind to 90% of foreigners that come to visit us is mostly incorrect, just a result of the work of spin doctors, marketing guys and pretty much anyone that wants to sell stuff at an inflated price. This is quite obvious when it comes to food stuff: apparently, just adding the word "Tuscan" to anything allows the manufacturer to raise its price by a...

After three years spent looking for stories about this incredible region of mine, coming back from a little break was never going to be easy. No matter how ahead you plan, the dread of being late or having chosen the wrong subject is always around the corner. Luckily, though, this land is so full of amazing things that you just need a bit of luck and inspiration. A while ago, as I was researching for stuff to talk about, I bumped into an article that was talking about a town in Maremma that I...

We come back after a little Christmas break trying to answer one of the most annoying questions ever: "what are you doing on New Year's Eve?". While it looks quite harmless, it has the potential to unleash a world of pain, both to your sanity and your beleaguered wallet. I've made so many mistakes trying to follow the party imperative that I pretty much gave up completely on this tradition, choosing to spend the last hours of the year mostly at home. As not many people ascribe to this rather...

The last weeks of the year are always a time of great excitement and a little bit of dread. Despite your religious tendencies, the idea of meeting with loved ones and indulge in some culinary excesses sounds tempting but there's always the mandatory happiness, the pressure to spend and consume like there's no tomorrow. In the last few years, our episodes ahead of Christmas have told you about traditional festivities, weird festivals and the food that must be on every Tuscan holiday table....

For someone whose stated mission is to at the very least be aware of everything there is to know about Tuscany, coming to terms that this is not the case isn't exactly easy. Quite recently, as I was scouring the internet for interesting stories, I came across some amazing pictures. Problem is, they didn't look anything like Tuscany. If all, they looked like they were coming from either India or the Middle East, something that puzzled me to no end. When I realised that such a place actually...

After spending almost three years talking about my wonderful homeland, some of you might wonder how a one man band seems always able to find reasonably interesting topics. The process is a lot messier than I'd like but sometimes it borders sheer madness. This week, for example, I had scheduled a completely different episode but decided against it. I tossed the notes I had already taken and started staring at the map, looking for inspiration. A name immediately attracted my attention, a weird...

One of the best things you can do in Tuscany is just to take your vehicle and drive without a real destination in the back roads of this amazing land. The least you will find is many charming villages, vistas to die for and, maybe, a place where you can get great food without breaking the bank. Sometimes, though, Lady Luck throws you a very juicy bone. I came to this little village near Mount Amiata absolutely by chance, as I was driving through the Brunello region with my motorbike. When I...

When we started out this podcast, back in February 2021, our main mission was to tell you everything about the lesser known parts of our beloved region, those places you won't find on the cover of your travel guide. While we still try to stick to our original vision, we also love to help out any tourist to get the most of his time in Tuscany. Look for example at one of the most famous landmarks of this land, a bridge that is very quirky and exceedingly popular. I'm sure that the millions of...

We come back to you after our only second break in almost 3 years, something of which we sincerely apologise. Unfortunately, this time, we had a pretty good excuse as my little corner of the world was ravaged by some serious floods. While we are all well, we had a lot of cleaning up and helping to do, which made it impossible to publish our weekly window on this incredible land. In order to forget about the sorrow and destruction around us, this time I decided to talk about a little town not...

Now that the weather has decidedly turned for the worst, even the most obstinate summer lover has got to admit that autumn is upon us. This is a weird time in Tuscany, where almost everyone adores the sun and the beach. While we long to complain again for the excessive heat, nature offers us a lot of seasonal treats to get ready for the cold and dark evening of the year. Back in the day, when poverty reigned over vast tracts of this land, people were eager to exploit one of nature's best...

From the first day of this podcast we've been hellbent on demonstrating that even the more mundane corners of this land hide incredible things. Some of you might have rolled your eyes, thinking this is just another attempt to bring back Tuscany to its golden age but this land is really special. Even if you're a seasoned traveller, expert in the art of avoiding the usual tourist traps, chances are you'll miss some of the outstanding beauties of our region. Look at Valdichiana, for example:...

One of the things that puzzles the most my foreign friends is how, sometimes, people in Tuscany are completely unaware of stuff that just lies a few miles from where they live. This can be explained with two simple facts: nothing in Tuscany ever changes and, sometimes, places that look quite close on a map are actually much harder to reach than they look. More than 25 years ago, for example, I landed somehow in a thoroughly unremarkable village around 20 km from my hometown. It was just...

Of all the famous art cities in Tuscany there is one that is a bit different, that always seems to march to its own drum. Despite being beautiful and fascinating, you sometimes have the impression that people are not really happy you're there to visit. They have nothing against tourists but they're accustomed to enjoying their wealth in peace, far away from the troubles of the land. Their splendid isolation lasted for centuries and this is why some people think that this is not really Tuscany...

I've been telling y'all from day one that this homeland of mine is incredibly varied and that there are many places that look nothing like the postcard image that so many people have in their head when they think about Tuscany. And, yet, some of these areas positively look alien, like literally out of this world. A few miles from the town where my father was born, the vistas you could see were so strange that people could only think about Hell. Up until a few decades ago, a trip on these...

After a very long and extremely warm few months, it looks like summer is finally on its way out. This will undoubtedly cause some sadness to those of us that cannot imagine their lives away from the sea. While it will be a long time until we finally get to swim in the sea and bask in the sun, this doesn't mean that we're not allowed to spend some time in our favourite vacation spots while the weather doesn't turn ugly and cold. Tuscany has many great places where you can have a great day trip...

In the 2 1/2 years we've spent telling you the stories of this incredible land, we've hardly ever talked about the river that made it what it is. That's not a coincidence as with rising urbanisation and pollution, Tuscans have lost the primal connection to our mother river. While nowadays people only think about the Arno when it becomes dangerously high, things weren't always like this. Up until not many years ago, when people had less disposable income and travelling was much harder, people...

One of the most challenging things we face while trying to explain what makes this land so special is that we constantly have to fight stereotypes. Whenever people think about Tuscany, a series of images of outstanding beauty, art and refinement come to everyone's mind. While it is true that, sometimes, our motherland can offer such peaks of astonishing beauty, the reality is quite far from this picture-perfect image. Take our capital, for example. You might have the impression that once...

Early September is a weird time of the year: summer isn't technically over but the weather is sometimes rubbish and the feeling of sliding towards winter is overwhelming. Luckily there is a way out of the late summer blues: using your weekends to explore this crazy land of ours, especially the least known parts. Take, for example, the Valdarno Superiore, the first part of the Arno valley: while it's nowhere near as popular as the big cities, there are plenty of places with a long history and...

With this crazy heat wave that keeps pummeling our nation, many people wish they had more time and money to just spend a few days by the sea. This, maybe, explains why the previous episodes of this podcast dedicated to seaside resorts have been much more popular than our usual average. As the audience is king, we scrapped our planned episode and thought about hitting the iron while it's hot. We were afraid of repeating ourselves, which is why we looked long and hard for a seaside place that's...

With Ferragosto finally behind us, most Italians feel like the summer is actually over. It's a relic of the past, when everybody was on vacation for the whole month of August and the 15th was hump day, when you start to think about work, school and the usual routine. That's rubbish, as this is actually some of the best time of the year for a beach break. There is a place on the Tuscan coast, south of Leghorn, where everything seems perfect: the beach is long, astoundingly white, the sea is...

August 15th might mean absolutely nothing to you but here in Italy is one of the most important days of the year, the apex of the summer, the day when, even if you're completely broke, you'll do anything to spend a day out. This has quite evident consequences, as most tourist spots are completely booked, traffic goes crazy and is quite difficult to find a way to spend a nice day with your family. This doesn't mean that you have to hide in your hotel and wait for the crowd to disperse. Tuscany...

There are some places in our incredibly varied region that sometimes leave even us locals a bit baffled. Take, for example, a charming little village not far from Siena. It's sure nice, surrounded by lush nature and has a rich history but you would never guess what's the party trick it has up its metaphorical sleeve. You see, after realising that most people came to visit because of the curative properties of their thermal spring, they just decided to build the entire village around it....

If you ask any red-blooded Tuscan what does he really think about his land, he will undoubtedly say that it's the most beautiful place in the entire planet. While I've travelled enough to know that there are places on this green and pleasant planet that are even more stunning, I'm still convinced that no other place has the same density of beautiful things to offer. Need a proof? Think about the least known corners of this very popular region, those that tourists usually skip, the ones that...

When July comes to an end, something stirs the soul of every Italian, the ancestral memory of the summers of old, when August was the month when the entire country shut down for the mandatory vacations. While it was unnerving to see big cities turn into veritable ghost towns, Italians were quite happy to migrate to their favourite resorts, either in the mountains or by the sea. My family never had their own favourite spot, which allowed us to know many towns all over Tuscany but when I think...