Florence

Florence is the city the whole world pictures when it thinks of Italy, and that's both its gift and its burden. The Renaissance was born here and never quite left. The Uffizi, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio sit woven into ordinary daily life rather than roped off as monuments. You buy your bread in the shadow of buildings older than your country. For a certain kind of person, there is no more beautiful place to wake up on earth.