Pistoia

Pistoia is the Tuscan provincial capital that Florence's shadow has kept under the radar — 89,000 residents, an exceptionally intact medieval-and-Romanesque centro storico, and the distinction of being Italy's Capital of Culture 2017. The Piazza del Duomo is the set-piece: Cattedrale di San Zeno (12th-c) with Giovanni Pisano's silver altarpiece of St James (start 1287, additions over the next two centuries — one of medieval Europe's most ambitious silver works); the octagonal green-and-white striped Battistero (1338); the Palazzo dei Vescovi; the slender Romanesque campanile that was originally a Lombard watchtower. Walk five minutes and you find the Ospedale del Ceppo, a working hospital since 1277, with Andrea della Robbia's 1525 polychrome terracotta frieze running 50 metres across the loggia depicting the Seven Works of Mercy — one of the great public artworks of the Renaissance.

Pistoia's other surprise: the city's name became the word 'pistol' in most European languages because the small firearm was invented and manufactured here in the 16th century. Today the local economy runs on plant nurseries — Pistoia is Europe's largest exporter of ornamental plants and trees, with the surrounding plain covered in 5,000 hectares of vivai (nursery gardens) supplying half the public parks in Western Europe. The Pistoia Blues festival (early July) brings 50,000 people to Piazza del Duomo annually.

The Tuscan kitchen here is rustic-Apennine: castagnaccio, necci, the local farro from the Garfagnana, and brigidini di Lamporecchio (anise wafers) from the neighbouring town. The Apennines start 20 minutes north — the Abetone ski station, the Padule di Fucecchio wetland reserve, and the Pistoia mountains' faggeta beech forests.