Relaxing in the Val d’Orcia

Pubblicato il 26 Maggio 2013 da Genni

Of the many beauties, hidden and not, in Val d’Orcia, one of my favourites is a hotel with wellness centre just outside the beautiful medieval village of San Quirico d’Orcia. Enjoying a unique view over the Val d’Orcia Natural Reserve, this centre has many treasures to offer visitors.

On arriving one can’t avoid taking in the breathtaking view with hilltop Pienza, Radicofani and Montalcino in the background. Secondly, one is instantaneously hit by the sense of tranquillity of this hotel. Guests can enjoy this peacefulness, together with the wonderful landscape, either sitting next to the outdoor swimming pool, maybe sipping a drink from the cocktail bar, or from their suite in the hotel.

For the adventurous wanting to explore the Val d’Orcia one can organize at the reception a trekking or mountain-bike tour. For other sport addicts there are a tennis court, a mini football court, a fitness centre and billiards, just to name a few. However, the real fun is all inside, where guests can finally retreat from city bedlam and finally find aesthetic, physical and mental wellbeing. Here one can enjoy all kinds of treatments from massages to aromatherapy steam baths, from beauty treatments to total body solarium, from chromotherapy to saunas, and much more. To avoid being spoilt by choice there is thankfully a professional staff that helps guests to choose a personalised programme for all kinds of needs. Breathtaking is the pseudo-Roman hydro massage swimming pool, whose sodium chloride water at 32°/34°C really relieves tension.

Now adding to all this, the wellness centre has recently inaugurated the Etruscan & Salt Caves. Underground guests will discover a whole new world with hot tubs built in the rock, a thermal cave, a Turkish bath, a Salt Cave, the Relaxation Room and the Tea Room. The high concentration of magnesium and potassium contained in the thermal water has an osmotic effect, allowing the minerals to be absorbed through the skin with incredible benefits for the body: strengthening the immune system, protecting sensitive skin, releasing hydrating and draining properties as well as cardiotonic effects and great stress relief.

Here too guests can select various programmes to follow, choosing either the Salt Cave, the Etruscan Cave or the Thermal Cave. The hot tubs also have head-lumbar waterfalls, while feet will enjoy the reviving plantar path. There is even an anti-ageing waterfall – ice cold! To conclude one can relax on a chaise longue and enjoy a chromo massage or a nice cup of tea.

At the end of such a relaxing day what’s better than tasting delicious typical dishes at the restaurant at just 20 metres from the hotel? Built inside a 13th-century farmhouse and surrounded by a garden, this restaurant enjoys the same magnificent view over the Val d’Orcia as the hotel. Here menus change seasonally following the natural course of local products: most are based on traditional Tuscan dishes of the past, even dating back to Etruscan times, some are the recent inventions of their creative chef. My particular appreciation goes to their eclectic wine cellar which obviously also includes the most prestigious bottles of Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, but even the red and white house wines are not to be snubbed.

Open all year round and accepting arrivals on any day of the week (in contrast with traditional accommodations which during the high season only accept arrivals on Saturday), this hotel is really an excellent location for a completely relaxing holiday in the heart of Val d’Orcia.


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May in Tuscany

Pubblicato il 17 Maggio 2013 da Genni

What I love most of Tuscany is the countryside, particularly in May. My doctor, who attentively supervises my hay fever, thinks I’m a masochist, but personally I believe we all are one way or the other.

The luxuriousness of the countryside in this period is breathtaking and supported by the heavy rains preceding this season. The fields are an emerald green dotted with the bright red embarrassed faces of poppies who have finally decided to spring from the ground, while the hillsides are sprinkled with the vivid yellow flowers of the broom plants. Wild flowers, in lovely shades of purple and yellow, complement the poppies, while outside the old farmhouses, against their old age stone walls, the roses start to bloom in a kaleidoscope of colours together with the lilac flowers of the sage.

In the olive groves, white flowers with yellow button hearts start to sprout among the pruned jade leaves. Even the vineyards are wakening up from their winter lethargy and become greener. In the orchard the cherries start ripening from pink to red. While in the evenings the not indigenous jasmine fills the darkness with its penetrating fragrance.

But abruptly, as in the best opera aria, everything dramatically changes and by the end of May the green of the wheat fields will start to drain and the Tuscan countryside will once more wear its bright yellow and brown shroud in anticipation of summer.

Meanwhile, along the seacoast, the bathing establishments are rousing; whilst the attendants comb the sand brightly coloured beach umbrellas start sprouting from the sand. Contemporarily, in towns and villages, bars and restaurants are finally placing their tables and chairs outdoors, whereas local committees start planning events. It’s the beginning of the ‘sagra’ season, village festivals where visitors can get the most of excellent local food and wine, as well as enjoy music while, with an observant eye, really soak up the true essence of Tuscany.

Yesssss, Spring is finally in the air.


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Pubblicato il 12 Marzo 2013 da Beppe

“ The Spring of the Renaissance” at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Plan your spring break looking at the accommodations in Florence offered by Tuscany Holiday Rent.

Good news. On March the 23rd 2013 a great exhibition, “ The Spring of the Renaissance” will be held at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

Jointly organized by Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, the director of the National Museum of Bargello, and by Marc Bormand, the conservateur en chef at the Department of Sculpture of the Louvre Museum, the exhibition is going to last up to August 18th 2013. After it will move to Paris, to the Louvre Museum, up to January 2014.

The aim is to illustrate the genesis of the “miracle” of the Renaissance, that is the cultural and artistic renewal taking place in the15th and 16th centuries in Tuscany.

A deep break separates the Middle Ages from the Renaissance.

” I have put you into the center of the universe – God says to Adam- in order for you to be free educator and master of thyself”. That is, according to one of the most glorious offspring of the period, the humanist Pico della Mirandola, the spirit of the Renaissance. Its issues such as liberty, individual creativity have to be spread to arts, morals, politics and sciences. In its new way, in its critical and aware perspective of looking at the world, Renaissance turns back to the classical world as the highest peak of human values versus the transcendental ones asserted by the medieval background . The intellectual movement which operates this new reading of the past is Humanism.

Sculpture, as far as arts are concerned, is in fact the main artistic form to conceive and interpret  the new style, which is not only a formal and aesthetic ideal, but a new way of understanding man in relation to universe and history.

In the exhibition, divided into various sections, masterpieces by Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Luca della Robbia Andrea del Verrocchio interact with paintings by Masaccio, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Castagno, Piero della Francesca.

Just an example.

In1401 the medieval craft of wool announces a competition for a bronze door of the Baptistery in Florence. A biblical  issue. The Sacrifice of Isaac is the proposed theme, including the well – defined characters of Abraham, his son Isaac, the angel stopping the sacrifice, the ram meant to replace Isaac, a donkey and two servants.

Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, the two competitors, though sharing the same cultural background, present works wide apart . Ghiberti, whose bas-relief was ultimately preferred for the still going-on late gothic culture offered an allegorically pleasant miniature. No drama in front of the event: on the left the two servants seems to be speaking to each other, unaware of the ongoing tragedy. To the right Abraham, on the act of sacrificing his son, does not betray any emotion whatever. The same for Isaac. The ram, quietly squatting next to a bus, completes the serene scene.

In Brunelleschi’s work the role of the landscape is less prevailing, he chooses to emphasize the human and emotional values of the  characters. In this sense, his work can become the artistic manifesto of the new era.

Unlike the work of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi enhances the dynamism, the plasticity of bodies. The characters become actors, able to perform autonomous actions, thus strengthening the sacrifice, real emotional core of the composition. Even the angel appears here as a patent body in its compositional function of establishing a new line of force while preventing with its hand the sacrifice, in opposition to the one of Abraham.

That’s just a hint.

The exhibition is something more, an event which has to be appreciated on the spot through its direct appeal to both eye and heart.

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The exhibition “From Boldini to De Pisis” in Florence

Pubblicato il 12 Marzo 2013 da Beppe

If you love Tuscany and  its landscape  you can’t miss  the colours and the atmosphere of Easter in Florence.

Here, a gorgeous apartment with a  breathtaking view over the Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria is the perfect framework of  your  adventures downtown. You might profit of the many cultural events. One in particular: the  exhibition ” From Boldini to De Pisis”.

Florence, now, welcomes  the masterpieces of Palazzo Massari in Ferrara, seat of  both  prestigious nineteenth century collections and of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Filippo de Pisis,  lately damaged by the earthquake that struck  Emilia-Romagna in May 2012.

Deliberately sympathetic to the dramatic events, the Tuscan city means with this exhibition to strenghten the emotional  bonds  some of the  artists here on show used to have with Florence. The exhibition, lasting up to May 19th 2013, has been chronologically organized in two different venues:  Villa Bardini and the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti.

Villa Bardini, on the hills surrounding Florence with a dramatic view on the city is the perfect location of the Ferrara collections. Twenty-six masterworks including romantic paintings of Turchi,  Domenichini and Pagliarini  but above all the portraits of  Giovanni Boldini, which are really worth a visit. Formal perfection, elongated feminine elegance enriched by the artifices of make-up and milliners’ work are the prevailing features of the portrayed ladies, creatures continuously  swinging between stage and reality. They suggest as the American  art  historian Bernard Berenson underlines ”a strong power of magic”. Boldini’s quick brush strokes evoke  self- determined,  charming , middle upper class females, fixed eternally in a single and memorable moment. Their  radiant  beauty  seems to challenge time.

A different perspective is the one charmingly suggested by Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti.in his catalogue to a past successful  exhibition Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti.organized in 2008 at Villa Schmitz by the  Comune di Montecatini Terme,  Pistoia. He authoritatively imagines the artist bringing out the ladies’ egos  just  before the oncoming autumn of life or, in the attitude of  a sorcerer, collecting the fragile petals to be reassembled for a single  moment of eternal spring.

In the other venue of the exhibition the Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Pitti we can again  linger on   Boldini’s  still- lives : “A corner of the table of the painter” and “ Apples Calville”  which show an unusual side of the painter, so far from the sophisticated  and   emancipated creatures of the Belle Epoque.

After a quick look to the other  great artists of the exhibition such as  Angelo Conti, Minerbi, Muzzioli  let’s focus on the gorgeous painting of  Gaetano Previati’s” Paolo and Francesca” of 1909, based on  Dante’s fifth Canto of the Inferno.  A game  of light and shadow  in motion where the artist reaches  the top  of his painting.

His  brush dissolves  the forms  for the benefit of the spiritual reality of the subjects represented. Light  is the true protagonist. In a visionary and hallucinatory  atmosphere the two lovers shape up  the infernal storm that overwhelms the lustful,  together with the damned souls on the hand  right side. The faces of Paolo and Francesca still express the ardor of passion that binds them forever, conveying deep emotions to us who, even today, can share the same tensions and anxieties. The visitor,  caught  up in a complete involvement,  is  now unable to  go on. The other  great  painter on show,  Filippo  De Pisis, will be the subject of his next adventure. His   eyes and heart  are too full . He is walking out  into the streets,  abandoning himself  to the Florentine  springtime.

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French cinema at the Institut Français, Florence

Pubblicato il 19 Gennaio 2013 da Beppe

Every Wednesday up to March 20, 2013 from 20 to 22 at the Institut Français in  Florence  a plunge into in French films.  A fil rouge  links  Florence with French culture,  cinema  in particular. In fact, the “Institut Francais”, one of the most prestigious centers of French culture in the world  has got its site here in Piazza Ognissanti  and  the  successful event such as France Odeon takes place yearly in Florence. Now a good opportunity  to take part to sessions devoted  to  the history of French cinema, organized by the film critic Marco Luceri.

A  charming journey into the French film-making, originally shaped by the Lumière brothers, whose “ Arrival of a train at the Ciotat Station”  screened at the end of the 19th century, is  justly considered the real birth of cinema. But  the movie as a story, told through images turning round a plot, was pioneered by  Georges Méliés.

The silent movies of Abel Gance followed. In the twenties the avant-garde Dadaism and Surrealism approached film-making. Thence the productions  of  Ferdinand Lèger,  Antonin Artaud ant the masterwork  “A Chien Andalou”  of  1929 from the joint collaboration of Bunuel and Dalì. The poetic realism of Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier  and Marcel Carnè prevailed in the thirties.  The audience is going to appreciate masterworks such as “ A Day in the Country”, “Pépé le Moko”, “Quai de Brumes” and above all ”Les Enfants du Paradis” a romantic story  shot during the German occupation  which became  symbol of the French cultural identity. Chef-d’oevre  of Marcel Carnè based on a script by Jacques Prévert,  spanning between dream and reality, is a must of the French cinema, known all over the world and  loved  since its first show in 1945. After the disruption caused by the second war  witnessed by directors such as Robert Bresson and Jean Cocteau,  a new generation of radical  film-makers grew under the guide of André Bazin, one of the authoritative founders of the Cahiers du Cinema.

The French New Wave of the late fifties was born with  François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol  triggering later  brilliant directors such as Alain Resnais,  Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Louis Malle, Eric Rohmer who  were to deeply mark European  and American filmmakers. Surely such an interesting program  can’t be summarized in  few lines. It honestly deserves  better interest  and attention.                                                                                   Spend  few days in Florence. The exhibition “ Anni Trenta”  is going to end up in a short while (see on purpose the blog Tuscany Holiday Rent ”Palazzo Strozzi.  Anni Trenta. Arti in Italia oltre il Fascimo” published on October 18th 2012). You might as well profit from a lecture of Marco Luceri to widen your perspectives about French cinema.                                                                                                                                     As far as accommodations downtown  have a look at  Tuscany Holiday Rent.

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