The story of Francis of Assisi is one of the best known in Christian history. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Umbria who gave away everything he had, founded an order of friars committed to radical poverty, preached to birds and negotiated with a wolf, received the stigmata on a mountain in the…
Every town in Italy has two sets of restaurants. The first set is visible from the main street — the ones with menus in multiple languages displayed outside, with photographs of the dishes, with hosts who speak English and seats oriented toward the passing tourist traffic. These restaurants exist because tourists exist and they need…
Florence is not the problem. Florence is extraordinary — one of the densest concentrations of human artistic achievement in the world, a city that justifies every superlative applied to it and earns every visit it receives. The problem is what Florence does to a Tuscany trip when it becomes the entire Tuscany trip. Most visitors…
This is a bold claim. Tuscany is full of extraordinary sunsets — the region has been producing them for millennia and has become justifiably famous for the quality of its evening light. The cypress-lined roads of the Val d’Orcia at golden hour are practically a religion. The view from Fiesole over Florence as the city…
Every town in Italy has two versions of itself. The first version is the one most visitors see — the main street, the central piazza, the famous viewpoint, the restaurants with menus in multiple languages and prices that reflect their location on the tourist circuit. This version is real. It is often genuinely beautiful. It…
Every year, millions of pilgrims visit Assisi. They walk the Basilica of San Francesco, they admire the frescoes, they follow the path of one of the most important spiritual figures in history. Almost none of them know about Le Celle. Located just a few kilometers outside Cortona, in the hills of Tuscany, Le Celle is…