Tuscan Traveler’s Picks – Books to Read Before Traveling to Italy in 2017, Part One

Over the winter months, reading from the new crop of fiction set in Italy will heighten the anticipation for your upcoming Italian vacation. Guide books are great planning tools, but novels and short stories add depth, fantasy, historical background and imagination to an Italian adventure. These books are set in Rome, Florence, Venice, Sicily and Naples. (Please add to the list by commenting on this post and check out last year’s picks.)

legal-holiday-books-624x445The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith

the-girl-from-venice-9781439140239_hrA suspenseful World War II love story set against the beauty, mystery, and danger of occupied 1945 Venice. One … Read More

Tuscan Traveler’s Tales – 50 Years Since the Great Flood

Fifteen or more years ago I came to live in Florence. One of the historical tales of a city that has thousands of years of interesting stories was the Great Flood of 1966, known to Florentines as L’Alluvione a Firenze. I read every book I could about the flood, watched videos, searched online and viewed images by famous photographers. One of my favorite books was a collection of art by children who experienced water rushing through their city. This is one of the images.

I wrote about the flood here, here, here, here, hereRead More