ULTIMATE ITALY

Famed for its crowd-pleasing cuisine, cypress-cloaked landscapes and elegant palazzos, Italy offers enough for a lifetime of new discoveries. From a coastal road trip through Calabria to street art tours in Turin and dining in the shadow of Mount Etna, here are 21 experiences that cast the country in a different light

- JULIA BUCKLEY

01 TUSCAN LANDSCAPES

With ancient hill towns and mist-covered valleys lined with olive groves and vineyards, the Val d'Orcia offers the most beautiful snapshot of Tuscany

There's a very important question to be answered when you visit Pienza: is this the most beautiful town in Italy? I'm going to say yes. Staring at the view from the town walls is like looking at a painting. Unspooling below are hills in 50 shades of green, cut through by slashes of grey - unpaved roads chiselled from the clay beneath. Cypress avenues stripe the landscape, terracotta Renaissance towns cling to every peak. And the backdrop to it all? Monte Amiata, a dormant volcano gently wrapping around the landscape, as if she's gathering the valley in an embrace.

I'm not the only one who loves it. Pienza was the 'ideal city' for 15th-century Pope Pius II. Born in what used to be Corsignano, when he became pope he bulldozed his birthplace and created a perfectly proportioned Renaissance town in its stead. With its hulking palazzos and narrow alleyways, Pienza is still spectacular. It also produces one of Italy's best pecorino cheeses, but I must resist sampling it and move on it's time to take a trip around the volcano, to absorb the best of Tuscany.

From Pienza, I drive towards Amiata, looping round the east side of the mountain. San Quirico d'Orcia is the first stop. Here, I stand in the shadows of ancient churches and walk through a ghostly Renaissance garden bound by tumble-down walls. Next, it's a climb towards the wine town of Montalcino then on to another winding road, Amiata's peak beckoning in the distance. Standing at the foot of a hill, centuries-old olive trees standing guard around it, is the Abbazia di Sant'Antimo, an abandoned medieval abbey.