Fiesole to Lucca: Tuscany on foot - Country walks and Renaissance art

Pleasing views, cooling breezes, the cultivation of vine and olive, light and space: these were key in encouraging wealthy merchants in Florence and Lucca to build villas in the surrounding countryside as their summer residences. But just as the town houses were constructed to demonstrate the accomplishments of the patron and the skills of his architect, their country villas did the same, with the added benefit of a garden.

In these less-visited corners of Tuscany (we deliberately avoid crowded spots), there is an extraordinary number of villas and gardens. This tour includes some of the best, linking them by geographical proximity – and in some cases the feasibility of walking between them – and for the purposes of aesthetic and architectural comparison. There is something about discovering these villas and gardens on foot which enables one better to understand their genius loci and their merits.

As gardens were considered extensions of the villa, they were designed to display artworks of the horticultural variety as well as sculpture of stone and bronze. The shapes of the topiary, the patterns of parterres and the delight of the vistas combine with the beauties of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture carefully positioned to best effect. Traditional sculpture is still practised in Tuscany; in the gracious town of Pietrasanta, there are dozens of small workshops where the five-hundred-year long tradition of delicately shaping a block of marble into art is still very much alive.

Beyond the gardens, the Tuscan climate lends itself to producing a number of wellstructured red wines based on Sangiovese and refined white wines, as well as excellent olive oil. The combination of care for provenance of ingredient and excellent cooking means that the meals should be of a high order. Matching local wines with food is an increasingly popular craft, and this tour offers an opportunity to experience this first hand.