We just returned from a trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we took one of the walks, actually we took 1/2 of one of the walks. We planned to walk from Montepulcina to Pienza stopping at Montechelli for lunch. The book said it was 3 1/2 miles to Montechelli and another 3 1/2 miles to Pienza. It took us 4 hours to walk to Montechell. The walk was beautiful and the directions exact. There were four of us all in good shape but the walk was more exhausting than we expected, given the discription in the book. We knew we could not continue on to Pienza. Montechelli is tiny pristine town without public transportation, but with wonderful people, one of whom gave us a ride back to Montepulcina. I would recomend this book for anyone interested in walking in the area but my experience is to double the amount of time they expect the walks to take .

I bought this book before a recent trip to Italy. We stayed in a town described in the book and did one of the walks. Wonderful scenery and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk, and the excellent lunch at the restaurant recommended. We thought the book extremely useful and very well researched, and hope to use it to plan more walks next year. - Duncan Naylor and John Cowell

I was inspired by this guidebook to do 4 days of walks in Tuscany this spring -- from Buonconvento to Montalcino, Sant'Antimo via Ripa D'Orcia to Bagno Vignoni, and on to Pienza. I had previously done the Montepulciano-Pienza walk. Every walk I took was wonderful and I can't recommend this way of seeing Italy highly enough! There is no way I could have done these walks without this book, which I found to be very accurate. There were a few places where I had minor trouble interpreting the directions, but was never really lost, and I found the maps very helpful. Proprieters of the places I stayed or stopped for a meal were sometimes amused, but always pleased, when they heard I was on foot. I also had the Lonely Planet guidebook to walking/hiking in Italy, but found that to be much less helpful and less detailed. It was clear to me that Lasdun and Davis had done painstakingly thorough background research. (i.e., had walked every trail more than once, and had tried every restaurant -- obviously a great hardship, especially in the spring and fall!) It will take me years to do all the walks in this book that call out to me, but I'm already thinking of my next trip (in grape harvest season this time).

An interesting edition about the contemporary architecture, good examples of another way to building cities according to the health rules.