The Role of Tuscany
The region was one of the few never to be neglected at any time during the era of the Grand Tour. Travelers went to Tuscany or, at the very least, passed through Tuscany. This was true in both directions, given its central position, and in this it already differed from other destinations, to which people made just one journey: the tour went through Tuscany on the way out (heading from north to south, usually to Rome) and/or on the way back.
Yet looking simply at the number of times the name of Tuscany appears in the descriptions does not give us a clear idea of the history of its appreciation. Which was, initially, inhibited by an aesthetic sensibility indifferent to the beauty of “barbaric” Gothic art and then, with the evolution in taste and the emergence of Romanticism, grew to such a point as to make the land of Tuscany the immortal myth that it is still is today.