Contact: Email IV Travel

Leader: Luca Granucci, Soleombra

ItalianVisits.com links:
Florence, Chianti, San Gimignano, Siena

Try to imagine a pilgrimage from the magnificent Piazza della Signoria in Florence to the amazing Piazza del Campo in Siena.

A small strip of land, for centuries witness to bloody battles and fierce rivalry lies between these two cities.This land is Chianti, and we will cross it step by step from North to South.  Not the Chianti of the postcards, not the Chianti identified with a robust wine made from French grapes, but the true Chianti. A Chianti to discover slowly, going down into the valleys and the climbing back to the ridges, touching upon ancient churches, castles, and renaissance villas as we go and then stopping where we can overlook the rooftops of a medieval village which survives clinging to the mountainside.

Chianti, whose people proudly preserve their roots and traditions of the pleasure of feeling themselves, even today, Chiantigiani doc!!

Tuscany is full of surprises.  This is a journey into an unknown part of Tuscany, in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi whose wanderings brought him to his spiritual retreat in the Casentino area.

Casentino is a land of harsh savage mountains, lonely hermitages, transparent sky and spiritual nature.

Our pilgrimage will take us from the Franciscan hermitage of Camaldoli to the hermitage of the Verna and will be a spiritual experience which will stay in your heart.

The Orecchiella Park is situated in the north-west of the region and is a corner of the world where nature still reigns supreme.  It is a stupendous part of Tuscany which stretches from the wonderful scenery of the Apuan Alps and the Garfagnana to the wide spaces of the Appenine watershed where it meets the land known as Emilia.

The excursions are long and arduous but the fatigue is recompensed as we walk through the silence and the wild places of the Park.