Tuscany is arguably the best-known region in Italy. Movies and novels have captured its romantic rural landscape: bronze hills planted with grapes and olives, punctuated by stone farmhouses and pencil-thin cypress trees. Historians see Tuscany as a crucible of art and culture whose native sons caused shock waves in Renaissance art and architecture and whose works of literature planted the seeds of the Italian language. Over the course of its history, the region has maintained a balance between its rustic lifestyle and its urban appeal. Tuscany is the rare case where both of these identities-the agricultural and the cultural-depend deeply on one another for their inspiration and survival. The rich artistic achievements and former political power of cities such as Florence and Siena are noteworthy. Florence once thrived as an independent city-state, complete with its own currency, the florin. A rash of wealthy rulers and individual patrons underwrote the boom in artistic creativity that has earned Florence its reputation as a first-class città d'arte, or city of art. The city groans with Renaissance masterpieces. It was here that Michelangelo brought a fiery physicality to sculpture through works such as the David (which turns 500 this year) and where Botticelli opened the door to secularity in the fine arts with his paintings "Spring" and "The Birth of Venus." Dante Alighieri speaks of his home, Florence, with love and bitterness in "The Divine Comedy," a poem so influential that its Tuscan vernacular was adopted as the basis of the modern Italian language. Like the unmistakably Tuscan hill towns in the background of countless Renaissance paintings, the region's rural backdrop was never far removed from the educated, urban ruling class. Most wealthy families owned a plot of land and a villa in the countryside, where they would spend summers and holidays. It was here at the family farm that those two worlds intermingled. The centuries-old system of land distribution called mezzadria, or sharecropping, ensured that landowners and contadini (farmers or peasants) came into regular contact. The sharecropping families, often many families together under one roof, lived in the house attached to the podere, the piece of land doled out to them to farm. All vegetables, wine or meat produced on the podere were split evenly with the landowners. The massaia, usually the wife of the chief farm manager, often cooked for the owners during their long stays at the country villa. Through this exchange, Tuscany's wealthy developed a taste for rustic, country cooking. The mezzadria system was especially strong in the land surrounding Siena and probably explains the presence of so many farmhouses placed at regular intervals among the fields. Tuscany's sharecropping economy lasted through the end of the 1960s.
What Tuscans eat today is remarkably unchanged from the meals cooked at the podere decades and even centuries ago. Beans, slow-cooked in a flask or simmered in thick ribollita soup, are so central to the diet that they have earned Tuscans the moniker mangiafagioli (bean eaters). Garden greens such as Tuscan kale and fresh herbs including thyme, rosemary and fennel add a distinctly local flavor to soups, crostini and salami. Grilled meats are a beloved treat, especially the revered bistecca alla fiorentina, a two-pound T-bone quickly charred over a wood-burning flame. Pork roasts and chops are a common meat course while pork sausages flavored with fennel (finocchiona) and melt-in-your-mouth herb-encrusted lardo (cured pork fatback) have gained a reputation beyond the region's borders. Tuscans, unlike most other Italians, eat lots of chicken-pan-fried or stewed, or made into rich chicken liver crostini.
For the unknowing palate, Tuscany's saltless bread can come as a shock, but die-hards insist that it matches perfectly with salty wheels of pecorino, artisanal prosciutto and zesty green olive oil, all washed down with plentiful amounts of wine. Along the region's lengthy coast, seafood dishes such as the fish stew, cacciucco alla livornese, are added to the list of typical Tuscan dishes.

email this article printer friendly