Walking in Tuscany - A Walker's Guidebook

Guidebook to 50 walks through Italy's Tuscany, Umbria and Latium, ranging from brief strolls to a five-day trek (the Chianti Trail). Includes the wild Chianti ridge, city walks through Perugia, Orvieto and Volterra, and day walks on the beautiful island of Elba and along the unspoilt coast around Orbetello.

The essential work is the exceptional Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria by George Dennis, first published in 1848. The comprehensive two-volume travel-book-cum-guide makes for riveting reading as the author provides enthusiastic and detailed accounts of the sites discovered around the time of writing. Unless a search in a library or second-hand book shop turns up a copy, try the internet. Its precursor, Tours to the Sepulchres of Etruria by Elizabeth C. Hamilton Gray (1840), is even rarer.

A very readable account is D.H. Lawrence’s 1920s poignant reflections on these  long-gone people and their culture in Etruscan Places (in D.H. Lawrence and Italy, Penguin, 1985). Last but not least, quite a few of the travel essays in Henry James’ Italian Hours (Penguin, 1992), written 1872–1909, shed further light on these Etruscan places. A selection of books of a strictly archaeological nature that have appeared in English include:

• Banti, Luisa (1974) The Etruscan Cities and their Culture, Batsford
  
• De Palma, C. (1967) Etruscan Culture, Land and People, New
  York
  
• Keller, Werner (1974) The Etruscans
  
• Paget, R.F. (1973) Central Italy – An Archaeological Guide, London
  
• Pallottino, Massimo (1975) The Etruscans, Penguin
  
• Potter, T.W. (1979) The Changing Landscape of Southern Etruria, London
  
• Time-Life Books (1975) The Emergence of Man: The Etruscans
  

Similar publications in Italian are:

• Celuzza, M. ed. (1993) Guida alla Maremma Antica, Siena
• Cristofani, M. ed. (1985) Dizionario della Civiltà Etrusca, Firenze
• Various Authors (1993) Guida ai luoghi etruschi. Guide Archeologiche De Agostini, Novara