Luxury familyCircuit Toscana

About the destination: The city of Pisa once rivalled Genoa and Venice as a maritime power, emulated Padua and Perugia as a university town, and developed a distinctive style of Romanesque architecture. Today, the city draws its fame from an architectural project gone terribly wrong and relies on the tide of tourists who flow into the city every day. The most important monuments are concentrated in the piazza del Duomo. The baptistery, cathedral, Leaning Tower, and Camposanto shine like carved ivory, rising out of a broad expanse of emerald green grass. The duomo contains Giovanni Pisano’s masterful pulpit, with its violently dramatic Gothic reliefs. You can make your unbalanced way to the top of the Torre Pendente, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, from which local boy Galileo Galilei dropped a variety of objects in his attempt to understand gravity. Education has fuelled the local economy since the 1400s, and students from across Italy still compete for places in its elite university and research schools and help keep a vibrant and affordable cafe and bar scene. This metropolis of a hundred thousand inhabitants is much more than a tower, is a city full of art and history.

About the destination: Florence is as vital and beautiful today as when its wool and silk merchants and bankers revolutionized the economy of 13th century Tuscany, and the art of Dante and Michelangelo stunned the world. Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. The fruits of the city’s rebirth are still evident in its seemingly endless array of museums, churches and palazzi. With its historic centre classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Duomo, the elegant and beautiful cathedral, dominates the city and is an unmistakable reference point in your wanderings. The River Arno, which cuts through the oldest part of the city, is crowned with the Ponte Vecchio bridge lined with shops and held up by stilts. Dating back to the 14th century, it is the only bridge that survived attacks during WWII. Standing by the river at night, when the city is illuminated with a myriad twinkling lights, is unforgettable. But more remains of Florence’s incomparable heritage than stones and paint, the city’s indomitable spirit has also survived the centuries, ensuring Florentine life today its liveliness and sophistication.

About the destination: Arezzo is a province in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Arezzo. It has an area of 3,235 km2, and a total population of 323,288 inhabitants. (2001). There are 38 municipalities in the province

About the destination: Saturnia is a spa town in Tuscany in north-central Italy that has been inhabited since ancient times. It is a frazione of the comune of Manciano, in the province of Grosseto. Famous for the spa which gives it its name, its population is 280. It lies about 14 km (8.7 mi) from Manciano, 56 km (35 mi) from Grosseto, 37 km (23 mi) northeast of Orbetello and the coast and 115 km (71 mi) from Rome. Near the village, 800 L/s of sulphurous water at 37 °C gushes over a waterfall and down into a cascade of natural pools formed by the deposition of calcareous rock from evaporation of the water. The Church of Santa Maria Maddalena is the main church in Saturnia. The earliest historical records related to the church date back to 1188, but the current building is due to a restoration of 1933.

About the destination: This hugely popular sun-and-sand resort is known as much for its flamboyant Mardi Gras Carnevale, second only to Venice for party spirit, as for its dishevelled line-up of once-grand art-nouveau facades along its seafront, which recall the town's 1920s and '30s heyday. Viareggio's vast golden-sand beachfront is laden with cafes, climbing frames and other kids' amusements and, bar the short public stretch opposite fountain-pierced Piazza Mazzini, is divided into stabilimenti (individual lots where you can hire cabins, umbrellas, loungers etc). Only a handful of waterfront buildings retain the ornate stylishness of the 1920s and '30s, notably Puccini's favourite cafe, 1929 Gran Caffè Margherita and neighbouring wooden Chalet Martini (1899).