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

Across all of Italy, the “Settimana della Cultura” or “Week of Culture” will take place this year April 18-26. The 11th edition will once again promote art and culture by offering free admission to all Italian state-owned properties and to especially organized guided visits and exhibits to these cultural treasures.

To see a list of the special events taking place during this Cultural Week, you can check out the list divided by region on the official website for the Ministry that oversees the management of Italy’s cultural heritage (unfortunately, the site is only in Italian but it is easy enough to see a list by city).

The initiatives organized during this week are a perfect opportunity to spend a few hours in some of the most beautiful artistic settings Italy offers. The fact that they are free doesn’t hurt either, a nice detail in this period of economic difficulty.

Anyone in Florence for that week can check out a map of state museums here.
Among these, you’ll find the Galleria degli Uffizi, the Accademia, the Medici Chapels and the museums within the Palazzo Pitti.

As the slogan for the inititive says, “La cultura è di tutti: partecipa anche tu”, or “Our cultural heritage belongs to everyone, so participate!“

This is the list of Florence State museums that will be open on April 13 (”Pasquetta” or Angel’s Monday) as advertised on the official site.
Many of these are generally open on Sundays so they’ll be open on Easter Sunday. Check the site above for hours and to double check which ones will be open on Sunday.

apertura ordinaria - would normally be open on this Monday anyways
Cappelle Medicee
Museo di Casa Davanzati
Giardino di Boboli, Museo delle Porcellane, Museo degli Argenti and Galleria del Costume (biglietto unico, a common ticket for these museums)

apertura straordinaria - normally closed on Mondays
Galleria degli Uffizi
Galleria dell’Accademia
Galleria Palatina e Galleria d’Arte Moderna (biglietto unico, a common ticket for these museums)
Museo di San Marco
Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Villa della Petraia
Villa di Poggio a Caiano

photo by dan taylor

While it hasn’t been made official yet, the word is out that New Moon, the second Twilight sequel, will not be shot in Volterra as we had reported earlier. Twilight fans and locals are very disappointed, but it seems the production is being “realistic” and saying a town the size of Volterra cannot accommodate all of the filming crew.

Some scenes will still be shot in Volterra (piazza and palazzo dei Priori) but most on-location shots will occur in Montepulciano, another medieval Tuscan hilltop village about an hour away also deemed “more beautiful” for filming.

Montelpulciano is a charming town which we like and highly recommend visiting, but if size matters, Montelpulciano’s medieval center is actually smaller than Volterra’s! Both are beautiful in their own right but more importantly, since Stephanie Meyer’s book is set in and the Volturis family comes from Volterra, fans wanted to see Volterra on the big screen. If you’re coming all the way to Tuscany to shoot on location, does it make sense to not shoot in the actual town which is less than an hour away?

I suppose in the world of movies, anything is possible. Maybe any medieval town is the same as the next one?? Like I said, the announcement has not yet been made officially so we could still be pleasantly surprised. What do you think?

Visiting Florence and Tuscany is an unforgettable experience. For many, it might be a trip made once in a lifetime, for others it will be start of a love affair that makes you return over and over again. I first came to Florence over 10 years ago and have made it my home for almost 7 years now. Falling in love with an Italian certainly helped pave the way for my permanent stay :-).

In all these years, I’ve never really felt unsafe in Florence. The historical center is small, especially compared to many other European cities. You can walk almost everywhere, and there are people on the streets at all hours, making us feel relatively safe. Like all cities in the world, though, there is an uglier, shadier side that exists around this center. I was reminded of Florence’s darker side this last week when I had my purse/camera bag snatched just as I was leaving the city center.

Continue reading »

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.

Florence without the Medici family in its past would not be the Florence we have today. There were certainly other wealthy families in Florence that were patrons of the arts but none to the extent of the Medici dynasty.
Under the Medici, Florence became the “cradle” of the Renaissance. Palaces and churches were built for the family and then everything from tapestries, furniture, household objects and paintings and statues were commissioned to adorn these palaces and churches. As rulers of the city, the Medici had to show off their power to impress not only the citizenry but other powerful rulers throughout Europe.

The Medici dynasty ended with the death of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici on February 17, 1743. Before her death, she created the “Patto di Famiglia” where she willed all personal property of the Medici family to the city of Florence with the explicit condition that none of the Medici artistic patrimony was ever to be removed from the city.

Continue reading about the day of celebration »

Today I read on il Corriere della Sera (see the article in Italian) that Lucca’s center-right city government has passed a local law that will not allow the opening of new restaurants preparing dishes “of a different ethnic origin”. So no more Kebab or Couscous shops at least within the old city walls, the most beautiful, historical part of Lucca. The existing restaurants are “encouraged” to add to their menu a few typical dishes from Lucca, like minestra di farro or castagnaccio.

The first impression I got was that there’s something very wrong with this law, that it somehow seems to be inspired by some sort of gastronomic racism! Then, reading more about it (like here) it turns out that the law also regards other fast food type of places, such as pizza shops that sell pizza by the slice. It seems, however, that the kebab points are particularly under fire because it was said that “there are too many, they are ugly and smell”.

A representative of the city government explains that inside the walls, in 4 square kilometers, there are already 5 kebab places and several other fast food establishments. These places are often really small with no place to sit down and eat. In their opinion, they constrain people to eat in the piazzas sitting under the city’s main monuments, often leaving the remains of their meals on the streets. The new law is intended to maintain the city’s decorum by limiting the growth of these type of food shops, while at the same time promoting traditional restaurants that prepare typical dishes of both Lucca and Tuscany.

Explained in this manner, the law does not seem that bad. There are already similar laws in other cities. For example, on the boardwalk in Viareggio only certain types of shops, those that “increase the touristic value of the city”, are allowed. Still I believe they could have been more diplomatic and not refer to food of a “different ethnicity” in describing the fast food places that will no longer be allowed to open within the historic walls.

It would be interesting to hear the opinion of someone living in Lucca.

It is still quite cold in Florence and wet. At least this past Saturday there was a little bit of weak sunshine in between the rainy days as I made my way south of Florence towards Galluzzo. This small town on the outskirts of southern Florence is well-known for its “Certosa” which also gives its name to the “Firenze-Certosa” exit off the A1 road that passes really close by. Just imagine, though, that when this monastery was built in the early 13th century on a hill between two rivers, this was countryside and quite isolated from the city of Florence.

Continue reading about the Certosa monastery »

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 »

A not-to be-missed exhibit currently in Florence is without a doubt the one dedicated to Rafael’s famous painting, the Madonna del Cardellino, which after years of restoration has returned to shine more beautiful than ever.
On a recent day we went to Palazzo Medici Riccardi which is just a stone’s throw from the Cathedral and where the painting is on exhibition after a demanding period of restoration as it awaits to be relocated to the Uffizi Gallery.

The Madonna del Cardellino is not the only work on display in this exhibition, in fact, there are four additional works from the same period (early 500’s): The “Gravida” (attributed to Raphael), the “Monk” (from the Florentine school) and the interesting table that covered this painting and a characteristic glass terracotta by Girolamo della Robbia, “The Madonna, Child and Saint John.”

Read more about the exhibition >>