No lean city - Tuscany

Published Date: 11 October 2008 Bypass Pisa's most famous landmark in favour of the delights of the Tuscan countryside... WHEN I SAY WE FLEW to Pisa and never saw the Leaning Tower that's not strictly true. We studied a huge, scale model of it, sculpted out of finest alabaster, at an exhibition 50km away, in the heart of the Tuscan countryside. The hilltop town of V olterra gets ignored by a lot of people in their rush to check out the glories of Pisa, Siena and Florence. But climb to the top of the tower of the 13th-century Palazzo dei Priori, the oldest civic hall in Italy, and you'll see why this jumble of streets was once the region's richest city. Ahead of you, down the steep hillside, beyond the medieval walls and third century BC Etruscan gateway, is the site of some of the oldest salt mines in the Mediterranean –... [read full story]