These walking tours take the reader through Florence, Venice, Rome and Pisa, looking at art and architecture, and showing how each city developed through history. Originally developed as audio tours, they are now available in e-book form, taking readers on a walk through the cities and showing the sights en route.
Readers will find macabre sights - the tomb of a Venetian general's skin, a crypt full of skeleton monks - as well as sublime paintings and sculptures; amusing stories - a mercenary captain bested by Venice's contract lawyers, Bernini's scatological revenge on a pettifogging bureaucrat, and how Michelangelo used mattresses as weaponry - alongside tragic histories. But the focus remains firmly on history and art history, from Byzantine mosaics to Bernini, from Trajan to Tintoretto.