Discover Tuscany’s Blog: exploring Tuscany and all its hidden corners…

The old locomotive of the steam engine train to Marradi

We took a beautiful trip to Marradi a few weekends ago, a mountain village located in the Tuscan Apennines near the border with Emilia Romagna, to go the town’s annual chestnut sagra or food festival.

The Mugello chestnuts are famous and are protected by the IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta, or Geographical Protected Indication) trademark and the festival was a wonderful occasion to taste and buy not only chestnuts but many local products as well. We bought chestnut flour, several pieces of local cheeses and a small chestnut cake to take home, in addition to all the other chestnut treats we had that day.

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Yesterday was a beautiful day for Florence and for both residents and visitors alike. Aside from the near perfect weather, Piazza del Duomo officially became pedestrian only and was closed off to the traffic that for the last 60 years has wound its way around a corner of one of the most famous squares in Italy. The smog blackened facades of the Baptistery and Cathedral were marked by the passage of over 2.100 buses and hundreds of taxis, scooters, cars and trucks through the square every single day. Buildings and pedestrians alike will certainly benefit from the cleaner air and diminished noise of traffic.

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From now up to the 18th of December, the Vasari Corridor is once again open for visits but only with reservations. These visits, guided by special staff from the Supervisory board, are only offered for short periods of time during the year for small groups but at a reasonable price (14 euro which includes entrance into the Uffizi, which you can visit beforehand).

The famous corridor, built in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari to celebrate the wedding between Francesco I de’ Medici to Joan of Austria, connects Palazzo Vecchio to the Uffizi Gallery and to the Palazzo Pitti. It was a special passageway reserved exclusively for use by the Medici so that they could move freely from their residence at the Palazzo Pitti to Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of government.

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This past Thursday we spent the day in Chianti on a tour designed and supported by the Florence Chamber of Commerce and tourism board to promote the Florentine area of Chianti. We met our tour group in front of Santa Maria Novella train station at 8.45am and aside from a traffic incident that delayed our departure, we were happily on our way to Tavarnelle Val di Pesa by 10am.

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The waterfall at Marmore

We recently spent a few days in Umbria and even if we generally write about Tuscany on our blog, on this occasion we’ll make a small exception to tell you about this region bordering the south of Tuscany. You have to travel through Umbria if you’re traveling between Rome and Florence, so many visitors to Tuscany often stop along the way to visit a few of the beautiful towns in the region.

 This isn’t the first time we’ve visited Umbria: we’ve returned on several occasions because we’ve enjoyed its wild nature and its cities rich in history, while the great food and good prices have called us back time and again.

 Our small trip lasted four days in which we visited the waterfall at Marmore, the small city of Narni, Spoleto, Assisi and Gubbio.  

The waterfall at Marmore was our first stop. This beautiful waterfall, one of the tallest in Europe, is in southern Umbria in the province of Terni. The waterfall offers an enchanting spectacle: the water falls on three separate levels over a height of 165 meters. To visit the entire area of the waterfall you can choose among the 5 walking paths, each offering a different difficulty level and lasting from 20 to 60 minutes. We highly recommend following at least two of the paths to see different views of the waterfall and if you’re in good shape, we recommend doing all of them! Once we arrived to the top of path #2, a magnificent rainbow was waiting for us.

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