In Tuscany between the 14th and 16h centuries - the great era of humanism and Renaissance - movements were born and developed which radically renewed the culture and art of the time, leaving a profound and indelible mark on the common civilisation of Eur
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Of that extraordinary period of history, Tuscany, starting from the regional capital Florence, bears the greatest witness.
Great works of civic and religious architecture, sculpture and paintings of extraordinary artistic value, testify to the creative genius of great artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Filippo Brunelleschi.
But Tuscany is not just Florence. There is Sienna too, with its Piazza del Campo, the theatre each summer for its famous Palio.
In the province of Sienna (also famous for its great wines, such as Chianti and Brunello) Montepulciano and Pienza stand out, extraordinary gems of renaissance art, and San Gimignano, with its famous towers and turreted houses.
Then there is Pisa with its world-famous leaning tower; Carrara, with its Duomo clad in the precious marble that takes the name of the city; and also Lucca, Pistoia, Arezzo, Grosseto, Livorno, and Prato, that all boast churches and other monuments of great architectural and artistic value.
The beauties of the Tuscan countryside are innumerable. Above all, its landscape: the typical, unique, gentle and warm Tuscan countryside.
Wedged deeply like a triangle in the heart of Italy, it constitutes a transitional, area between the Po Delta and Liguria, which are highly industrialized, and those Italian regions which are still principally agricultural.
It stretches over the western side of the Apennines and includes the islands of the Tuscan archipelago. It lies on the sea to the west and south-west and borders with Liguria to the north-west, Emilia-Romagna to the north, the Marches and Umbria to the east, and Latium to the south-east.
Its limits are clearly defined to the north but less evident to the east, crossing the main ridge of the Tusco-Emilian Apennines and taking in the upper Val Tiberina, becoming even more uncertain to the south-east and south where they appear to be justified only for historical, linguistic and generally cultural reasons.
The first reliable traces of human presence in the region go as far back as the second Millenium B.C. known as the "Bronze and Iron" age.
Ruins of villages belonging to the above mentioned historical period have been discovered in various parts of Tuscany, together with a number of utensils and archaeological findings that confirm the existence of a reasonably weil organized civilization.
Between the 10th and the 8th Century B,C. the "Iron Age" reached its climax in the civilization of Villanova, whose name derives from the Villanova settlement, that has nowadays acquired great archaeological value thanks to the numerous spears, swords, combs and all kinds of jewelry that have been found there.
Around the 8th Century B,C. traces of a mysterious and extraordinary population started to appear all over Italy. The Etruscans, Etruria got its name from them. Under the Romans the name was transformed into Tuscia, then changed again into Tuscania and finally into Toscana.
The historians still question the origins of this population. The most credible hypothesis is that they came from Lydia in Asia Minor, as the traditions and the artistic expressions reveal evident traces of an oriental civilization.
