When I first visited Tuscany I fell in love. So much so that when I was writing The Echoes of Love, whose action opens in Venice, Italy, I knew there was only one place I could situate the hero’s country retreat: Tuscany, the perfect backdrop for romance.

The Tuscan landscape is simply breathtaking – the vineyards, the cypress trees, the colourful renders and roof tiles of the buildings. Just take a look at this Pinterest board I put together while researching my novel:

Follow Hannah Fielding’s board Tuscany on Pinterest.

Don’t you just long to dive into one of these pictures? Truly my hero Paolo is lucky to live in such a place. To modify a line by one of my favourite poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Tuscany is crammed with heaven…’

Of course, I am someone who very much thrives in inspirational surroundings – you may say they feed my soul. Having grown up in a house overlooking the very bluest of oceans beneath the very bluest of skies, I have always admired nature; have always longed to be connected to it and somewhat lost in grey, concrete cityscapes. So I was bound to feel an affinity for a place such as Tuscany.

But it is more than the landscape that captured my heart: it is the people, and the unique culture they have created in this ‘nation within a nation’. In particular, the region is infused with the legacy of the Renaissance that was born there. This was the land of artists Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; of writers Dante and Petrarch. In this region lie so many important and historic cities, from Florence to Pisa, Siena to Volterra.

American poet Oscar Fay Adams put it best in his poem ‘A Tale of Tuscany’:

Tuscany, land of fierce hates and wild loves and of limitless passions.

Such a perfect description of one of my favourite places in the world. If, like me, you are a romantic and a Tuscan aficionado then I highly recommend Adams’ narrative poem, which opens:

An Old-World tale. Who reads perchance
May deem it dull or idly told,
Preferring latter-day romance
Where well trained hearts their loves unfold.

You can read ‘A Tale of Tuscany’ online here.