The Gems of Tuscany: Being a Fragment for the Invalid and the Tourist in Italy

1852

Special Collections DG692 BU38

London: Ackermann & Co.

Divided into ten provinces, Tuscany is regarded as the birth-place of the Italian Renaissance, with cities such as Arezzo, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, and Florence dominating the literary-artistic landscape. The region spans some 23,000 square kilometres (8,900 sq mi) and has some 3.7 million inhabitants (Wikipedia, 2012), with Florence (Firenze) the regional capital. In the 1850s, Frederick Harrington Brett, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, enjoyed a restorative ‘bathing’ holiday in Tuscany. The springs and baths at Lucca and Pisa were called Gems, as was an ‘English lady’, who patronized the waters of Tettuccio at Montecatini. Brett called her ‘the Florentine Iris’.