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

The tiny medieval village of Volterra in central Tuscany will be the setting for the shooting of “New Moon“, the second chapter of the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer. As I read in a recent article on Variety Magazine , Eagle Pictures announced that the cast would move to Volterra for the shootings for the movie for a couple of weeks, most likely in May.

Many movies have been filmed in Tuscany, the last ’007 movie “Quantum of Solace” comes to mind as one of the latest. That film was partially set in Siena during the Palio horse race days (read our article of the Palio in Siena) . I was wondering, however, why would they choose Volterra for  “New Moon”? The answer is easy for “Twilight” fans but not everyone knows that Stephanie Meyer’s books have one of the most powerful vampire families, the Volturis, come from Volterra and thus an important part of the story is set in this Tuscan village.

Volterra is a true medieval gem and one of my favorite Tuscan cities. I’m really curious to see the city as the setting for some vampire adventures and I think the citizens will also be very excited about that. The “Twilight” book series have been a great success and I hope the “New Moon” movie will make Volterra and Tuscany more popular, especially among younger visitors.

The town has created a blog dedicated to offering news on the upcoming shooting and Volterra in general; check out the New Moon Volterra Town Blog.

Last December 14 saw the inauguration of the new high speed railway connecting Milan and Rome, crossing most of the country on a north-south direction.

This is one of the biggest public infrastructure works carried out in Italy in the last decades. The project is foreseen to be fully completed within the end of the current year.

Continue reading about Italy's high speed rail »

It’s time for ‘olio nuovo’ in Tuscany

Tuscany today is still a region with a strong rural character, its agricultural products being synonymous of quality and excellence in Italy and abroad. If the month of September is traditionally dedicated to the grape harvest and the production of great Tuscan wines, October and November are dedicated to another Tuscan product of excellence: olive oil.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVVO) is one of the base ingredients in Tuscan and Italian cuisine and anyone that cooks knows that a good EVVO (even better if organic) is indispensable for the success of many dishes.

If you find yourself in Tuscany during these weeks, take the occasion to learn more about olive oil by following the various phases of its production from the field to the table. You can see how olives are harvested, follow the olives to the oil-mill and obviously taste the freshly pressed olive oil.
Many Tuscan dishes are perfect for tasting new olive oil, from the simple bruschetta to the ribollita to  “zuppa Toscana” or Tuscan soup .
You can find excellent recipe ideas for more Tuscan dishes at Tuscan Recipes .

Continue reading about Tuscany's "new" olive oil>>

We finally made it! After several long and intense months of work, we launched a new version of our Discover Tuscany Travel Guide a few days ago! We completely reorganized the content and navigation, added new sections and new pictures and integrated this Blog and the Forum. The Florence section is growing so much that we decided to make it a separate website: Visit Florence, our travel guide about Florence, Italy.

We have so many ideas about how we want Discover Tuscany to be in the near future and are very excited about this new website. It will be a lot easier to publish and organize our articles. We have not yet included all our Tuscan experiences from this year, but we’ll be constantly adding new content over the course of the next weeks. So if you’re interested in Tuscany and Florence, add DiscoverTuscany.com and VisitFlorence.com to your bookmarks and come back to visit us regularly!

All over Italy local laws have sprung up prohibiting one thing or another, and the risk is taking home a hefty fine as a souvenir

It is well known that Italians are specialists in making laws and rules (and, unfortunately, just as good in not respecting them). So when the Berlusconi government gave the go-ahead to town mayors to create local laws to face the so-called “security emergency”, these didn’t wait to be told twice! In many cities in the Bel Paese, a series of new rules and regulations have been approved and anyone coming to vacation in Italy will do well to know about some of them, especially since many of these regard common behaviors such as eating a sandwich or taking a nap, feeding pigeons or getting a massage on the beach. The Independent in a recent article pokes fun of Italians and put tourists on guard with this article: “Tourists Beware: If it is fun, Italy has a law against it“. Tuscany is no exception. On some of our beaches it is now against the law to have an improvised massage often offered by immigrant masseuses to sunbathers. On a few beaches, there are even bans against “beach” activities such as beach soccer and racketball and even sandcastles!

Read more on the summer of bans

Welcome to our Discover Tuscany blog! We’ve decided to use this blog to post our outings and share interesting news about Tuscany and Florence with our readers and anyone particularly interested in Tuscany because of an upcoming visit.

We hope you’ll find what we post here useful. Please feel free to contribute with your comments and make our site a better resource for everyone!

Thanks and let’s get started!