Siena And Southern Tuscany PDF Download

Excerpt from Siena and Southern Tuscany In any journey through Southern Tuscany the traveller, if he be wise, will set out from Empoli and use the old mediaeval highway, Via Francigena, at least as far as Siena. If he come by train from Florence or the North it is at Empoli by the Val d' Elsa that he will enter this beautiful country; and, indeed, for all practical purposes the railway follows the road up the valley so far as the lovely city which on her triune hill seems to rule all this southern part of Tuscany, made up as it is of hill and vale and desert. The great highway, which, whether afoot or in the train, the traveller will thus follow to Siena is, as it were, the backbone of the Sanese. By it, and by it alone, whether from Rome or from the North, Europe, the life of Europe, passed into this great corner of Tuscany. Unknown to the Romans, the Via Francigena, or Francesca, for it is known by either name, was, as its name implies, the way of the Franks into Italy, the one thing maybe that anywhere in the world was created by the Dark Ages, as we so rightly call that vast period of time in which the light of Rome seemed to be extinguished and Europe at the mercy of the Barbarians. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."