For thousands of years, Tuscany has captivated foreign travellers with its hilltowns and a landscape that Mary McCarthy called "a combination of husbandry with an awesome elemental majesty and silence." Cypress tress still trace ancient roadbeds throughout the region, standing sentinel over sweeping vistas of vines, olives and sunflowers. Italy's most beautiful region, birthplace of the Renaissance and a must-see on the Grand Tour, Tuscany was home to Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, as well as Michelangelo, DaVinci and Raphael.

Now, the LITERARY TUSCANY TOUR follows the path of the novelists and poets, essayists and travel writers who shared poet Shelley's enthusiasm for his adopted "paradise of exiles."

Visits include:

Florence, where Dante first glimpsed Beatrice in a neighbourhood church, where the Brownings held court at the Casa Guidi, and where Lucy Honeychurch and Isabel Archer had Rooms with Views. Mark Twain, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, and countless others visited and wrote here.

Hilltop Fiesole, where Boccaccio sent his story-telling company in The Decameron to escape the plague of 1347, and home to Bernard Berenson and a brilliant Anglo-American colony of writers and artists. Incomparable views of Florence and the Arno river valley.

San Gimignano of the medieval towers, where everyone in E.M.Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread went to the opera and fell in love with Gino. From this hilltop perch you can see "half Tuscany, radiant in the sun". A favourite movie set, San Gimignano recently hosted Tea With Mussolini. Boccaccio is buried in nearby Certaldo, where seriously serious monks, irate at his bawdy Decameron, desecrated his tomb in the 19th century.

The Chianti region where Lady Chatterley first mused about her lover and Machiavelli about political power. When the Nazis overran Tuscany in 1943, the Sitwells hid Botticelli's Springtime and a cache of priceless paintings from the Uffizi gallery in their villa's basement. Chianti is the setting and set for Summer's Lease and Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. Oh, they make wine here, too.

Siena, Queen of the Middle Ages and great rival to Florence. Labyrinthine Siena is home to stunning art collections, a famous cathedral and an equally famous City Hall. Not to mention the Palio.

Volterra, where D.H.Lawrence communed with the buried Etruscan culture, finding metaphors everywhere he looked. Alabaster shops, a Roman Forum, and a Pisan-Romanesque cathedral are attractions. Rosso Fiorentino's mannerist Deposition (according to Mary McCarthy his only masterpiece) dominates the Pinacoteca.

Pienza and the verdant Valley of the Orcia River, home to writer Iris Origo, who, with her husband, in the 1920s restored a desolate valley to prosperity and then watched several armies turn it into a battlefield in World War Two. Read about it in Origo's War in the Val d'Orcia. Renaissance-jewel Pienza is the world's first planned city: tour participants furiously debate whether the lopsided cathedral is or isn't about to slide down the hillside into the famous Brunello di Montalcino vineyards. Much of The English Patient was filmed nearby.

Lucca of the wide moat, marble churches and the civilized pedestrian streets. A former Roman camp and birthplace of opera composer Puccini, whose house is here. Pisa, port of entry for the wool trade that created the Anglo-Tuscan connection in the 11th century, and home to Lord Byron and his circle. There's also an interesting tower here. The imposing Fortezza della Brunella at Aulla, subject of Kinta Beevor's heartfelt memoir A Tuscan Childhood. Top

Participants in the Literary Tuscany Tour will receive a suggested reading list as well as a list of art works on the tour. Along the way, guide Glenn Walton will give short talks about the places and art works visited and their part in works read.

But it's not all literary. Glenn Walton says "Tuscany is to enjoy. The wine, the art galleries, the hilltop towns overlooking vineyards and olive groves - we stop for all that. One of the favourite days is the drive through the Orcia river valley where we visit Iris Origo's gravesite overlooking Monte Amiata, have lunch with Brunello wine at a nearby country restaurant, and then meander over to Pienza to explore the markets. On the way home we stop to look at the monastery where they shot The English Patient. We take our time."

Visits to galleries and significant churches are a part of the schedule. Locations in movies made from novels or other works set in or using Tuscany include A Room With A View, The English Patient, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Romeo and Juliet, Summer's Lease, and Tea With Mussolini.

The guide would like the tour to be informative but informal, full of the art and wine and the views that have attracted people to Tuscany for millennia. Preferred group size is no more than eight on the Halifax tour and fifteen on the Boston one. There's a minimum of long-distance travelling or changing of hotels: three selected towns - San Gimignano, Lucca and Florence are "home base," and all the attractions lie no more than an hour's drive from them. And of course there will be lots of free time for shopping.

Glenn Walton is a writer, journalist, award-winning filmmaker and a university lecturer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Research on E.M.Forster took him to Tuscany in the 1980s, and since then he had returned regularly to a rented farmhouse near San Gimignano. One recent participant in the Literary Tuscany Tour wrote:

"Glenn is very generous with his knowledge without being pedantic, and obviously loves all the special things he showed us. I lived in Rome for eleven years and had no idea that there were such beauties just a short drive north of us. His tour was like an outing of friends - it was memorable, and Glenn is a first-rate leader."

2006 Tour Dates:.

Venice-Tuscany: April 21-May 5
Rome-Tuscany: May 7-May 21
Rome-Tuscany: August 22-September 5

For booking information for all tours or if you have any questions or comments, contact: Glenn Walton or call 902-492-2397.

---

More Italy Tours

Tuscan Retreat

Spend a week at the Monastery of Sant'Anna (where The English Patient was filmed). Optional classes in Italian, art history or cooking. Then spend another week touring the best of the Tuscan hilltowns: Pienza, Montalcino, Massa, Volterra, San Gimignano, Siena and Montepulciano. Monastery accomodations, local eateries, ravishing landscapes.

Tentative dates: by arrangement/moderate to cheap   

Includes: round-trip airfare, all accommodations, all ground transportation,
breakfast, 5 meals, all taxes, and all guiding.

This tour begins in the Gardner Museum in Boston, viewing Italian paintings acquired by the indomitable Mrs. Gardner and her advisor.
It then moves on to I Tatti, Berenson's hilltop villa in Florence, then travels through the Tuscan and Umbrian landscape, visiting some of the chapels and towns where works like Piero's Hercules originated. The tour ends in Venice with visits to the Accademia Gallery and the Palazzo Barbaro, where Mrs. Gardner lived on her frequent stays in the city.

Tentative dates and prices by arrangement:  Expensive

Thank you for visiting The Literary Tuscany Tour Page. Ciao!