Page 41 - EffettoItaly Presentation

Farmhouses

A Few miles south of Florence, in the Tuscan
hills, a handful of Italy's finest historic buildings
have been turned into glorious places to stay.
From private villas to country inns, to a entire
hamlets-turned-hotel. Every village in the area is
a miniature hill town: crenellated castles and
stone farmhouses with terracotta roof-tiles and
crumbling towers top every contour of the vine-
clad slopes. The silver green of the olive groves
is sliced with stark lines of cypresses. One feels
like trespassing on the middle-distance of a
15th-century painting depicting some long-
forgotten incident in the life of a saint. It‘s like
being sucked into a clichéd landscape: in
Tuscany one always feels close to one's roots
and to a civilization out of which our own has
grown, our European mainstream.

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