Tuscany Geography

The region's shape is set by two mountain systems and one river. The Apennines form the northern and eastern boundary, and the Apuan Alps behind Carrara are a separate, sharper range of marble that has been quarried since Roman times -- the stone Michelangelo chose his blocks from. Between the mountains and the sea lies the hill country that most of the region's towns occupy, built on ridges and summits for defence and drainage rather than for the views they are now known for.

The Arno runs west from the Casentino through Florence and Pisa to the sea. Its floodplain is the region's industrial and transport corridor, and its flood history is severe: the inundation of 4 November 1966 reached over four metres in parts of Florence.

South of the Arno the land opens into the clay crete senesi and the Val d'Orcia, a farmed landscape so deliberately composed that UNESCO listed it in 2004 as a cultural rather than natural site. Further south again, the Maremma was marshland until reclamation in the 18th and 19th centuries, which is why its towns are ancient but its farms are not.

Offshore, the Tuscan Archipelago -- Elba, Giglio, Capraia, Montecristo and others -- forms a national park in the Tyrrhenian Sea.