In Tuscany, villas are a great base for a holiday and will allow you to visit some of the region's incomparable attractions.

Urban glories

Since the days of the Etruscans (if your history is a little hazy, that's centuries before the Romans) this area has been urbanised and a centre of sophisticated lifestyles. Some towns and cities can trace their origins back to the 8th and 9th centuries BC or even before. In fact, Etruscan kings once ruled in Rome itself, until they were ejected at the time the city declared itself to be a republic.

During the Roman period, many famous cities existed here and Tuscany has Roman remains aplenty to offer those interested in history. Of course, it is perhaps in the medieval period that urban life reached its most notable zenith, when cities such as Florence, Pisa and Siena became world-famous as centres of science and culture during that incredible period called the Renaissance.

The elite in many other countries and cities envied the region for its abundance of sophistication and intellectual leadership. Today you can see the legacies of that in the architecture, palaces, monuments and cathedrals of these cities and some of their less well-known and smaller counterparts in other parts of the region. In Tuscany, villas are available that sit in the heart of this great historic landscape and from which the glories of these famous cities can be easily reached and explored.

Countryside and people

It can be argued that cities, even great ones, can be a little impersonal and that they are perhaps not a representative sample of a country and its culture. To truly experience such things, you may need to get a little off the beaten track and away from urban centres - and again, in Tuscany, villas might help you to do exactly that.

Being positioned in some of the staggeringly beautiful countryside allows you to find hilltop villages that are virtually unchanged from how visitors would have found them in past centuries. Here you'll find a character that's very different to that of the big cities and perhaps a little more authentic.

For example, in and around Chianti you're going to find the vineyards that produce one of the world's great wines, and one that may bear little resemblance to the Chianti you're familiar with from the local supermarket. You can also try the local cuisine, some of which is about as far from pasta or Bolognese as you can get. Try, for example, Chieche alla Pisana - small eels cooked in sage, tomatoes and served with parmesan. It's truly delicious and an example of authentic regional cuisine.

Giovanni Balboni works for To Tuscany, who specialise in finding the perfect Tuscany villas in Chianti as well as selected villas in Umbria and Puglia. To Tuscany is proud of their villas and their reputation. All our Tuscany villas are personally selected and visited by our representatives to ensure we offer only the best in the region.