Hidden Tuscany: Discovering Art, Culture, and Memories in a Well-Known Region's Unknown Places
John Keahey
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1250024315
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Hidden Tuscany, acclaimed author John Keahey takes the reader into a part of Tuscany beyond the usual tourist destinations of Chianti, Florence, and Siena. The often overlooked western portion of Tuscany is rich with history, cuisine, and scenery begging to be explored, and Keahey encourages travelers to abandon itineraries and let the grooves in the road and the curves of the coast guide your journey instead.
Follow Keahey as he turns off the autostrada and takes roads barely two lanes wide to discover fishing villages along the Tuscan sea. Then move inland into rolling foothills adorned with cherry orchards, ancient olive groves, and sweeping vineyards that produce wines that challenge Chianti's best. Here it is still possible to follow the paths of Romans, Crusaders, and pilgrims from throughout the western world who were eager to reach Rome.
Hidden Tuscany provides intriguing images of places such as Livorno, a port city with canals; Pietrasanta, Tuscany's Citta d'Arte; and Capraia, an island formed by volcanoes. Keahey engages with the inhabitants of these enchanting landscapes, whether sculptors who toil in marble studios or residents whose own memories and traditions illuminate major moments in world history.
From coastal towns to vineyards farther inland to the Tuscan archipelago, Keahey reminds us that each village, city, and island has its own unique story to tell. For armchair travelers and vacation seekers alike, Hidden Tuscany brings a new side of this classic Italian region to life, and the result is mesmerizing.
Blood from a Stone (Commissario Brunetti, Book 14)
Fodor's Italy 2013 (Full-color Travel Guide)
about his food and about western Tuscan culture, but it was 3 P.M. and the restaurant was closing—I was the last to leave—and he had had a long day. Two English tourists walked in, and Filippo politely directed them down the street. He told them it was late in the day on a Sunday for a restaurant to be open, but they might find a pizza seller farther along. “Let us meet in three days,” he told me. “I would like to talk to you; it will help me practice my English.” * * * I had arrived,
the four houses in Ai Franchi. The man alerted Enrico’s family and members of a refugee family staying next door in Enrico’s grandfather’s house that the Germans were coming. Enrico’s father, the refugee father, and the grandfather pondered whether to hide out in the hills, certain that the Germans were only after the men. But they decided to stay. Why? The day before, they had slaughtered a cow, whose carcass was hanging in a ground-floor room below the living quarters. Such a home-based
full of anger. Once again, she said, justice was being denied. One of the survivors I had interviewed, Enrico Pieri, echoed my friend’s feelings. He told a reporter from the Florence edition of La Repubblica dated October 1: “I cannot believe that they have decided that such a thing is not possible. It is an offense to all 560 victims and among them innocent women and children; we cannot accept such a verdict.” Survivor Cesira Pardini told the same newspaper: “It is not right. All this is a
clusters of olive trees, and a few plots of irrigated grape vines. Low-riding walls of stone delineate various plots of land, and very quickly the small stone Church of Santo Stefano at Piano, long deconsecrated, pops up out of the landscape. The single-vault interior is barren; the floor is the wrinkled surface of the stone outcrop the church appears to be built on. Its origins have been traced to the second century AD, but in the ninth century, Muslim raiders destroyed the structure—and likely
grabbing a proffered water bottle. I thanked him and reflected on the dangers to the bike riders I had seen during my travels all over Tuscany’s coastal hills. They are on narrow roads, often with tight turns where oncoming cars cannot see them. I don’t know how many collisions between bike and car occur annually, but from what I have seen while driving around Italy over the years, the riders are a savvy bunch who know how to keep to the far right. I suspect crashes with automobiles are few. The
