Next Time Round in Tuscany

You have marvelled at the leaning tower of Pisa and the great scallop-shaped Piazza del Campo at Siena; in Florence you have queued for Michelangelo's David and the paintings in the Uffizi; you have inspected the towers of San Gimignano. Now, your duty done, you can start to enjoy some of the myriad pleasures of Tuscany which do not have to be shared with thousands of other visitors. All you need is a guide, and none is more amiable or better informed than Ian Norrie. For Florence, Norrie turns his back on the Uffizi, the Medici chapels and the cathedral, and takes the reader to churches on the edge of the old city to see masterpieces of Renaissance painting, sculpture and architecture; to houses where Dante and the Brownings lived; to little-frequented museums; and to the apothecary's shop where there is 'the sweetest scented air in all Florence.' Art galleries in Siena, Sansepolcro, San Gimignano, Arezzo and Cortona are enthusiastically assessed, so are the delights of the central piazzas in Pistolka, Montepulciano and San Giavanni Valderno. There are tours through hill villages in Chianti country and the Val d'Orcia. Directions are given for journeys through tortuous terrain to remote abbeys in the Casentino and Pratomangno; Etruscan tombs are found in olive groves; Romanesque churches emerge ravishingly from umbrageous settings. Some places which the author attempts to visit are firmly closed, seemingly for ever. No matter, there are always alternatives and the 'Next Time Round' approach cautions the reader to avoid cultural indigestion. You cannot see everything. It is not a matter of guilt to miss this villa or that basilica. Next Time Round in Tuscany includes maps for each itinerary and the text is illustrated with Michael Floyd's distinguished pen and ink drawings off bell towers, city halls, townscapes, loggias, castle, Romanesque apses and Renaissance palaces. --- from book's back cover