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Italy: Birds and Art in Tuscany

Itinerary
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Rick Wright

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The ancient cultures of what is now central Italy occupy an even more ancient landscape…

…where romantic fortresses perch on Mediterranean islets…

…and long-dead Etruscans slumber in elaborate tombs cut into the tuff.

We’ll be spending our own nights more comfortably, the first six of them at a beautifully renovated Tuscan estate…

…within easy reach of many of Tuscany’s most important natural and cultural sites.

Our slow boat through the marshes of Diaccia Botrona takes us past reed beds and salt flats…

…where Red-footed Falcons make life difficult for the dragonflies…

…and improbably shaped and colored Greater Flamingos loaf in the shallows.

The comfortable ferry to Giglio Island takes us out to deeper, bluer waters, where Scopoli’s and Yelkouan Shearwaters often cross our path.

The lavish Etruscan collections of the National Museum in Tarquinia are housed in an equally impressive Renaissance palace.

But not everything in Tuscany is old, as the Hundertwasseresque mosaics in Pitigliano’s Jerry Lee Lewis cafe demonstrate.

Still, it’s sights like Siena’s glorious Campo, the best-preserved medieval square in all of Europe, that are emblematic of Tuscany’s rich past.

Here and in Florence, we’ll strive to live up to the pledge to leave no gelato unconed…

…and we’ll eat in restaurants where the plates can be almost as attractive as what’s served on them.

The wedding-cake facade of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella conceals Italy’s most beautiful Gothic church…

…and an almost unimaginably peaceful medieval cloister.

Just a few blocks away, Giotto’s perfect campanile rises from the south flank of Florence’s cathedral, the nesting site of a pair of urban Peregrines.

The city’s churches, palaces, and other monuments are kept in good repair by a small army of sculptors and stonemasons…

…working with tools and techniques passed down through the centuries…

…and stone from marble quarries active since the days of the Romans.

From Florence we move north to the Garfagnana Valley, carved out of the Apennines and the Apuan Alps by the pristine River Serchio.

Common Redstarts sing from rooftops in the mountain villages…

…and friendly lizards bask on ancient stones under a Tuscan sun…

…while cistus flowers are haunted by busy carpenter bees.

Our hotel for the last three nights of the tour is in Castelnuovo…

…the gateway to both of the mighty mountain ranges that dominate this region.

It pays in these wild landscapes to search rushing streams for White-throated Dipper and Crag Martin…

…and high mountain meadows for a wealth of wildflowers…

…most of them seeking shelter close to the stony ground.

Raptors soar over the steep valleys…

…and the handsome Italian Sparrow we have with us always.

The region’s architectural treasures, like the Romanesque parish church of San Lorenzo, are more severe than their urban counterparts in Florence and Siena…

…but they preserve a fascinating wealth of early Italian art, such as this ornamented capital in the mysterious church of Codiponte.

Itinerary
Bird List
Slideshow
Narrative
Tour Information

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