"We're castaways from the modern world, an oasis with the best art, food and fashion," says Federico Pratesi of his adopted Florence. The current head of his family's famed linen company-founded in nearby Pistoia by his great-grandfather in 1906-Pratesi's not just waxing poetic. When the sun sets here, the symmetrical stone facades turn into walls of gold. The normally muddy Arno becomes a river of light, and the terra-cotta curves of Brunelleschi's dome glow pink above narrow medieval lanes. Doorways peek into workshops where artisans have tooled leather, chiseled marble or gilded wood for hundreds of years. Were it not for the near-constant put-put-put of motorini, you'd almost think you'd stumbled into another century.
Which of course is all part of the allure. Because of its devotion to the past, this tiny Tuscan city of less than 370,000 people exerts an inordinately influential hold on the traveler's imagination. Florence rivals Paris or London in many respects, but unlike those major metropolises, it remains small and
exceedingly easy to manage. No postmodern towers mar the pedestrian-scale streetscape. It's possible to walk from the Giardino della Gherardesca on one end of the burg to the Giardino di Boboli on the other in well under an hour.
In between-scattered throughout museums, chapels and palazzi-lies one of the world's most magnificent caches of art, chock-full of homegrown masterpieces by the likes of Michelangelo, Botticelli, Donatello and da Vinci.
That rich artistic inheritance corresponds as well to an artisanal culture with roots in the Middle Ages. The tradition spans the Renaissance reigns of the luxury-loving Medici dukes and the 1950s birth of modern Italian fashion. (It's no accident that the labels Gucci, Ferragamo and Pucci, among others, were born here.) "Tuscans are obsessed with detail and quality," says Pratesi. He credits his family's success to the local dedication to handicraft: "You can still find three generations of artisans working on the same item under one roof. They're committed to that heritage-they don't like to work fast, and they don't like to make poor-quality goods." The ethos colors Florence. "When you live here, you share that standard," whether it be for the best silver, shoes or panini. "A nobleman and a shop clerk will expect the same refinement."
That lifestyle might be the real reason the city endures as a compelling destination. In Florence, even the run-of-the-mill is elevated, and visitors get to partake.
