Gaze across one of the most extraordinarily rich and varied landscapes in Europe… Here are vineyards and miles of wild mountain scenery; almost any view will take in other villages, clustering around the upper reaches of some hill, or the russet roofs of a fortified town deep in a valley.

Thirty-six villages and towns from all over Tuscany have been chosen for their beauty and for the part they have played in Tuscan history and culture. The vivid, highly descriptive accounts of each village are accompanied by page after page of marvellous colour photographs.

The book opens with those communities clustered around the great towns of Lucca and Florence, home to some of the world’s greatest works of art. As the author and photographer move south through the Chianti region to the valley of the Orcia, devoted to the cultivation of aromatic herbs, they discover the unique characteristics of each region. Here is the small town of Pienza, once called ‘the pearl of the Renaissance’. Here too is Piero della Francesca’s lovely Madonna del Porto, which once decorated the tiny cemetery chapel of Monterchi; and in San Gimignano the medieval towers loom over the town’s squares and streets like the backdrop to some surreal stage set.