Tuscany

The name comes from the Etruscans: Etruria, then Tuscia, then Toscana, and today's borders correspond broadly to those of ancient Etruria. Until 1860 it was a political entity of its own, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and to that Grand Duchy is owed a record worth more than many museums: on 30 November 1786 it abolished the death penalty and torture, the first legal system in the world to do so. The region's holiday still falls on that day.

There are 273 comuni in ten provinces, with almost four hundred kilometres of coast and the archipelago in front. Half of Western painting was born here — Florence, Siena, Pisa — but Tuscany also lives outside the museums: in the Sienese crete and the Val d'Orcia, a UNESCO site, in the rows of Chianti and Montalcino, in the towers of San Gimignano, in the ideal city of Pienza. The right months are October and May; and in the evening, when the coaches leave, piazza del Campo goes back to the Sienese.