Florence & Tuscany: city core, then countryside

Three days in the city, structured around two appointments

Florence has exactly two collections that demand a booked slot: the Uffizi and the Accademia. Everything else can be improvised. Put the Uffizi early on a weekday morning — it is a long, dense visit and the corridors get uncomfortable by midday — and give the Accademia a short, late slot, because it is essentially one sculpture and a handful of rooms. Book both through the official channels (uffizi.it covers both the Uffizi and the Pitti/Boboli complex) rather than a reseller, then plan the rest of the day on foot.

The cathedral complex — dome, baptistery, bell tower, crypt and museum — works on a combined ticketing system with a separately reserved dome climb. The climb is a narrow, one-way staircase with no lift; anyone uneasy about confined spaces should take the bell tower instead, which is almost as high and considerably calmer. Add the Bargello for sculpture, Santa Croce for the cloisters, and one long walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo at golden hour, which is free and remains the best view of the city.

Where to stay depends on your tolerance for footfall. The area around the Duomo puts you inside everything and inside the crowd. Oltrarno, across the river, trades five minutes of walking for artisan workshops, better-value trattorias and quiet mornings. Santa Croce is the compromise: central, lively at night, and a short walk to Santa Maria Novella station when it is time to leave.

Car or train? The honest answer is both, in sequence

Florence is enclosed by a camera-enforced restricted traffic zone, and hotel parking in the centre is expensive where it exists at all. Driving in is a needless expense and a plausible fine. The workable pattern is to do the city car-free, then collect a hire car on your way out of town — from a station or airport desk on the last morning of your city stay — and drive straight into the countryside.

Once you are out there, a car stops being optional. Rural buses exist but run on school and market rhythms rather than tourist ones, and the best agriturismi sit at the end of unpaved strade bianche. Two practical notes: book an automatic gearbox early if you need one, as they are a minority of the Italian fleet, and choose the smallest car your luggage allows, because hill-town streets and farm tracks were not designed around wide vehicles.

Choosing your countryside base

Tuscany is not one landscape. The Chianti hills between Florence and Siena are wooded, close-grained and quick to reach — ideal if you have only two rural nights. The Val d'Orcia, further south, delivers the wide golden ridgelines and lone cypresses, but it is a serious drive from Florence and deserves its own base. The Maremma coast to the west is hotter, wilder and far less visited, with beaches and Etruscan sites instead of wine estates.

When comparing farm stays, look past the photographs at three things: the road surface and length of the driveway, the distance to the nearest village with an evening restaurant, and whether dinner is served on site. An isolated hilltop with no kitchen and a twenty-minute unlit gravel descent is a different holiday from the same house five minutes from a village square.

Seasons, and the trade-off nobody mentions

Late spring is green and mild, with wildflowers and long light. Late summer and early autumn bring the harvest — the countryside is at its most atmospheric and its busiest, and cellar visits need booking further ahead. High summer is hot in Florence, where stone holds heat well into the night. Winter is the connoisseur's season for the city itself: the museums are calm and the queues short, but many rural properties close and the landscape is bare rather than golden.