INTRODUCTION
One of Italy’s largest regions, glorious Tuscany is awesomely beautiful. Everywhere you look are landscapes like paintings, pristine hill villages and hamlets crafted from stone that seem unchanged since ancient times. Gently rolling hills are clothed with fields of golden wheat dashed scarlet by poppies. Winding lanes lined with pencil-straight cypress trees lead to inviting villas with views to picture-perfect hill towns of medieval and Renaissance splendour, recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Walking in Tuscany means all this – and stacks more! The dense forests of the Casentino, rugged mountains of the Apennines and Apuane, Mediterranean maquis backing long sandy beaches in the Maremma on the Tyrrhenian coast, and there’s even the stunning island of Elba, a world of its own.
The tiny lookout on Monte Penna (Walk 16)
Visiting Tuscany on foot is akin to making a voyage through time, as the region is riddled with historical pathways used by traders, pilgrims, armies and travellers since time immemorial. A breath of fresh air for visitors between the crowded art cities, the walks follow in the illustrious footsteps of the ancient Etruscans, the Romans, Hannibal, Saint Francis, Barbarossa, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Pinocchio, Giuseppe Verdi, Byron, Milton and DH Lawrence – to mention just a few. Oh, food and wine play a big part too.
Thanks to the excellent capillary network of trains and buses, travel around Tuscany is both enjoyable and reliable, enabling visitors to enjoy the scenery without contributing unnecessarily to pollution.
Exploring Tuscany
To help visitors orient themselves, the 43 walks in this guidebook have been grouped into nine areas, each the focus of a separate chapter. Each chapter illustrates the area’s distinctive character and gives a potted history along with essential practical information.
Chapter 1, The environs of Florence, introduces the hilly surroundings of the regional capital, including Medici towns and villas at Fiesole and Artimino, as well as Vinci, home to the great Leonardo.
Chapter 2, The foothills and high Apennines, is a guide to fascinating hills where Pinocchio is star, then the Apennine mountains and rugged ridge walks.
Chapter 3, Alpi Apuane, presents challenging routes in the rugged ‘Alps of Tuscany’.
Chapter 4, Pratomagno and the Foreste Casentinesi, tells of monks and spiritual retreats in age-old forests, with the renowned town of Cortona as an added bonus.
Chapter 5, Chianti, evokes an area that needs little presentation as its picture-perfect vineyards and rolling countryside are famous the world over thanks to the celebrated red wine.
Chapter 6, West of Siena, introduces little-known gems such as Volterra and Sovicille, alongside top tourist choices the walled town of Monteriggioni and San Gimignano ‘of the fine towers’.
San Gimignano and its fine towers (Walk 24)
Chapter 7, The Crete and Val d’Orcia, reveals gorgeous postcard scenery and walks lined with cypresses.
Chapter 8, Elba and the Tyrrhenian coast, describes routes on the divine island of Elba and the adjacent coast, with their heritage of industrial archaeology.
Chapter 9, The Maremma coast and hinterland, embraces an exciting pristine coastal park then quiet inland villages joined by ancient Etruscan ways. Magical places.
See Appendix E for further reading material on Tuscany, including guides to trekking and climbing as well as more general literature.
Plants and flowers
The marvellous array of unusual trees and flowering plants is reason alone for a visit to Tuscany. Of the broad range of vegetation zones, the highest (at around 2000m) verges on alpine, with gentians, thrift and gorgeous lilies. Below are hills covered with woods of conifer and deciduous beech, which is synonymous with the Apennines; delicate cyclamens are a constant presence here too.
At lower altitudes, conifers and beech give way to woodland populated by typical Mediterranean trees such as the evergreen holm oak, or ilex, with its bushy foliage of glossy dark green oval leaves, a great favourite with charcoal burners. It is often in the company of the mastic tree, or lentisc, which has spear-shaped leaves and red-black berries; its resin was the world’s first chewing gum. Cork oaks are also widespread. Their thick fissured bark, impervious to fire, was used by the ancient Romans for sandals and for floaters on fishing nets; nowadays it is stripped for bottle corks every seven years, leaving the bare trunk bright red.
Clockwise from left: the curious fruit and blossom of the strawberry tree; cyclamen thrive in the woods; lavender and trefoil on Elba; fissured bark of the cork oak; olives ripening in autumn; delicate paper-like rock roses flower in spring
Also notable is the so-called strawberry tree, hung with delicate white bell-shaped flowers and, at the same time, clusters of lumpy orange-red fruit balls. The ripe fruit tastes like strawberry, although the second part of its Latin name Arbutus unedo means ‘eat one’, implying that one is enough! Sturdy bushes of tree heather bear tiny sweet-scented bell blooms in springtime: its branches are bound into bunches as brooms for city sweepers.
Majestic stands of pines thrive along the Tyrrhenian coast. The umbrella or stone pine, often bent into sculptured shapes by the wind, provides nutritious nuts, a key ingredient in pesto sauce. Similar maritime pines were planted to reclaim mosquito-ridden swamps and defeat malaria, as well as being an important source of turpentine and timber for boatbuilding.
As flowers go, there’s ubiquitous yellow broom, which scents the air with its distinctive perfume. Another early bloomer is the caper plant, a straggly spiny shrub that covers walls with its pink-white flowers – to be appreciated in haste before they are gathered for pickling. Spring and summer delights include rainbow masses of paper-like Cistus (rock roses) and pink-purple wild gladiolus, not to mention emerald-green wheat fields streaked with the brilliant blue of cornflowers and the red of poppies. Wild orchids come in myriad amazing varieties, from the minuscule Ophrys, so-called insect orchids, to the showy lady orchid and the common purple.
Towards the coast, prolific wild herbs reveal their presence with a pungent aroma or fragrance released when inadvertently trampled or even lightly brushed. The long list features oregano, mint, thyme, rosemary and sage. Sandy beaches and dunes are home to pale lilac sea lavender and to the woolly yellow plants of everlasting, an unassuming plant whose elongated silvery leaves conjure up oriental spices when rubbed, hence its nickname ‘curry plant’.
Late winter also brings delights. As early as February, acacia or wattle trees (of Australian origin) are decorated with dazzling yellow feathers. Fields and woods have black-centred pink-mauve anemones, periwinkles, crocuses, grape hyacinths, intense indigo bugloss, common mallow and the fresh green hellebore.
Last but not least, flanking the extant ‘wild’ vegetation bands, are the cultivated zones where ridges between fields are punctuated with archetypal cypresses. The other omnipresent Tuscan essentials are the olive trees of ancient standing and orderly ranks of precious grapevines.
See Appendix E for suggested further reading for wildflower enthusiasts.
