Val d’ Elsa is the “heart and soul of Tuscany” and the center of La Via Francigena, the pilgrim's route, a fulcrum of Medieval and Renaissance culture and knowledge. Val d’Elsa is a magical place where great thinkers realized important discoveries, literary giants were inspired to write their masterpieces, and celebrated artists achieved their greatest works of art.

            The Val d’ Elsa preserves its artistic and cultural heritage comprised of paintings from the thirteen and fourteenth centuries, tabernacles and frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli and his school, Filippino Lippi’s greatest work, “Madonna with Child,” the “Sacro Monte of San Vivaldo” (the Jerusalem of Val d’ Elsa), a pre-industrial glass collection, and Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” and Boccaccio’s “Decameron.” In the villages of Val d’ Elsa, we explore the myths of Templarism and the legends of the “Sword in the Rock” and of “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,” which were born of legends originating in Val d’Elsa.

            Val d’ Elsa offers visitors the collective knowledge of a unique place, which is a work of art in itself…the birthplace of ideas and experimentation, and the heart of artistic, literary and scientific revolution in Tuscany, in Europe, and in the Western World.