The New Year is upon us and it’s time to think about your next travel plans. And where better to take inspiration than from Best in Travel, the ranking compiled by one of the most beloved and followed guidebooks: Lonely Planet, which every year publishes a ranking of the 50 must-see locations around the world.

For 2024, Italy has just one destination: Tuscany.

Is it thanks to Tuscany’s cities of art? To its picture-perfect landscapes? To its delicious dishes and excellent wines? Yes, of course, but not only! It is the Tuscan lifestyle itself that rewards. A region where living is a pleasure, attentive to the balance between its people and the environment, and open to cultural growth.

“Few places celebrate the slow life or embody good living like Tuscany,” reads the Best in Travel guide, which designates 2024 as the year of rediscovery of the great Etruscan civilisation, which after millennia still continues to fascinate and amaze with incredible discoveries such as that of the 24 bronze statues in San Casciano dei Bagni, province of Siena.

Among the first to study these people in a more systematic way was Cosimo I de Medici, the first Magnus Dux Etruriae, that is, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. 2024 marks the 450th anniversary of his death.

Among the Unesco heritage sites that make Tuscany shine are the Medici Villas themselves and their gardens, along with Florence, Pisa, Siena e San Gimignano, Pienza, the Val d’Orcia, Lucca and, to return to the subject of the Etruscans, Volterra, one of the most important lucumonies, the city-states of ancient Etruria.

Also awaiting those who are lucky enough to visit Tuscany in 2024 are the initiatives to celebrate another great figure: the Lucchese composer Giacomo Puccini, as the 100th anniversary of his death also falls in 2024.

Just one of the many reasons to discover this wonderful region in the heart of which also stands The Mall Firenze.