Arezzo

Arezzo is the Tuscan city that locals hope you'll overlook, and that is exactly its appeal.

It sits on a hill in eastern Tuscany, a prosperous, deeply Italian city of about 96,000 that most tourists only glimpse from the train to Rome. The old town climbs to the sloping Piazza Grande, ringed by medieval and Renaissance facades, with Piero della Francesca's great fresco cycle in the church of San Francesco and the home of Giorgio Vasari nearby. This is a working city with real money behind it, a world capital of gold and goldsmithing and home to Italy's oldest and largest antiques fair, which fills the squares the first weekend of every month. Outside that weekend, life is busy but unhurried, lived by Italians rather than performed for visitors.