Tuscany has an immense cultural and artistic heritage, expressed in the region’s numerous churches, palaces, art galleries, museums, villages and piazzas. Much of these artifacts are found in the main cities, such as Florence and Siena, but also in smaller villages scattered around the region, such as San Gimignano, Pisa and the often forgotten jewel, Lucca

Florence is one of the world’s most important artistic centres, so much so that it is often nicknamed the “art capital of Italy” (the city is also believed to have the largest concentration of Renaissance art and architecture in the world). Painters such as Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence and Tuscany as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance, Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Tuscany contains numerous museums and art galleries, most of which store some of the world’s most precious and valuable works of art. Such museums include the Uffizi, which keeps Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the Pitti Palace, and the Bargello, to name but a few. But most of the frescos, sculptures and paintings in Tuscany are also held in the region’s abundant churches and cathedrals, such as the Duomos or Cathedrals of Florence, Siena, Pisa and the Collegiata di San Gimignano.