Tuscany things to do | PlanningaTour.com

Tuscan cooking

From the beach to the kitchen
A gastronomic competition that can change your life. Aprons girded and utensils at the ready! For the 18th edition of “A tavola sulla spiaggia” the epic clash of fabulous dishes from ancient recipe books and others that valorize traditional on the beach picnic foods at the Roma di levante arena in late August.

Besides tasty tidbits, the event has proved its capability to “dish up” unexpected talents: many of the partecipants in past edition have transformed a hobby into a profession at which they excel. Take Toni Brancatisano, a Pietrasanta resident originally from Australia, the house-wife contender at the 2008 edition who recently took first place at the “La scuola-cucina di classe” gastronomic talent show and now hosts a program on Gambero Rosso Channel.

Or the Roman princess Orietta Boncompagni Ludovisi who in 2006 tickled Forte’s palates with the turquoise cabochon dessert she invented just for fun and went on to author the novel and very popular “Guida delle migliori pizzerie d’Italia”. Or Fabiana Giacomotti, a journalist and writer who delighted us in 2007 with her Mediterranean antipasto and has now launched Dolcelieve, the first-ever line of haute patisserie for gluten intolerants with a sweet tooth.

Web-site: www.atavolasullaspiaggia.it

Italy coast

forte-dei-marmi — Italy coast - Forte dei Marmi

Surf’s up
At the Pontile, biting salt spray and crashing waves, walls of water, barrels and riptides: riding the giants, dreamin’ California… Forte dei Marmi’s sea like you never seen it: the best place in the world to be. In the tube.
It’s said that caution is a natural human mechanism. Caution, not cluck. And maybe this dualistic thought caution vs fear is what runs through the mind of the surfer riding the Versilia waves.

On that same sea, so safe and welcoming so perfect for kids and families, that canturn into an amazing arena of impetuous sewlls, barreling and mean; waves to catch, attack, caress and follow into whitewater. Pur collective California dream plays out in a bit of versilia’s sea near Forte dei marmi’s Pontile. An expanse of water that has become the Tyrrhenian playground for stoked foam-breathers on bords.

Everything turns on the waves, whenever, wherever: little snappers, crumbly waves, or big, glassy giants, perfect, pitching, peeling. An eternal pilgrimage in search of ideal spot, even if the best spots are right there, around the Forte Pontile and a tad downscaled at Marina di Pietrasanta. The surfer suffering from perennial abstinence thus sets off looking for a nice wave to share with some good friends. Bundled in a wetsuit in winter or reveling in skin-sea contact in a summer.

The rest, all the rest, is an explosion of utter freedom and pure passion. The kind that drives you to frenetically click all the surflines to see where the surf’s up and then “dive” down from the remotest inland sites in Versilia by scooter, Ape, car, bike, VW bus…. any means of locomotion is the right one for getting to the beach or the Pontile, board under arm, and paddling out. This is what it’s all about. Someone defined it “the innermost limits of pure fun”.

A step into liquid time. Momentum. Passion. Passion that takes you, with your board buddies to hangouts like the Nimbus Club. Or to explore the specialized shops – on the increase throughout Versilia. The same passion that, in a business key, has spawned a host of boardshops that build to order (Ola Surfboards of pietrasant, for example).

The sea is an open-air stage on wich the curtain never falls: in winter as in summer, at dawn as at the dusk of a long, long day the blue crush is a never-ending attraction.
A “fatal” attraction, while all around unpredictable and unsettling, the unceasing wind and the whipping sea foam vehemently caress the senses of the surfer on a living curl at the morning of the earth.

Tuscany churches

The convent of the Clarisse and the Church of Sant’Anna
The idea to build a convent in the centre of ontecarlo was implemented between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, following the religious fervour created by the Council of Trent. It was built between 1610 and 1614 (from a design by the architect, Gherardo Menchini of Florence) and was enlarged subsequently with the inclkusion of the building that until then had been the residence of the Vicars of Montecarlo.

The running of the convent was entrusted to the Pooor Clares who remained there until 1810, when the religious community was expelled after the Napoleonic wars. The building was put up for auction and was subsequently redeemed and given to the Fondazione Pellegrini-Carmignani and used as a school for children.
The old convent complex, now in need of restoration, also includes the 17th century church of Sant’Anna, which is entered from Via Grande. Inside there is a Madonna in trono col Bambino e Santi of 1709 by Giovan Maria Corsetti and a San Lorenzo by Apollonio Nasini.

Villa Mansi

Dating back to the third quarter of the 16th century, the villa of the Parensi family is a compact, quadrangular block. The almost flat front of the building includes a portico and a loggia above with three arches on Tuscan columns; both are covered by a vaulted roof. By comparing the current building with a fine 17th century drawing by Domenico Checchi, its is possible to see the changes that ahve been made and how the villa stood at the centre of a vast agricultural estate.

Outside the enclosure walls, the public oratory has maintained the 17th century form as drawn by Checchi, with square pilasters supporting the entablature and the gable, and with curved stone cornices that enanche the openings in the facade.
The garden below it is borderted by the lemon houses and the olive mill.
The villa passed from the Mansi family in 1791, when Camilla Parensi, the last descendent of the family, married Raffaele di Luigi Mansi.

Roman churches

Church of San Quirico at Guamo

Church of S. Quirico at Guamo, called “in Casale”
The small church of San Quirico is built in stone from the nearby quarry at Guamo. It is built like a cottage and it has a nave and fairly small apse. The door in the facade is surmounted by a lintel resting on two brackets.
Both the layout and the size of the stone bosses in the facing suggest that it is quite old and probably dates back to 1023, when it was first mentioned in documents. During the restoration work of about 1930, some 16th and 17th century sepulchral slabs were found and new altar was made from a single stone.
An unusual altarpiece of the Giotto school, a triptych incorporated in a quadrangular structure and surmounted by an inflected-arch lunette, comes from this church; now in the Villa Guinigi museum in Lucca, it depicts the Vergine in Trono con Bambino (on the central panel), and Maddalena and San Michele Arcangelo (on the side panels).