Fly c. 11.00am from London Gatwick to Pisa and drive to the hotel near Sta Maria Novella. Visit the church where Boccaccio began his Decameron; Henry James frequently stayed in the piazza, as did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, translator of The Divine Comedy. Dante was a major influence on Milton, whose Florentine sojourns in 1638 and 1639 enhanced his erudition but spurred his love of English liberty; we see where he lived.

Via del Tornabuoni was at the heart of fashionable Florence in the 19th century, and two literary cafés of that era are still in business today. George Eliot stayed here in 1860 while researching Romola. Across the Arno, pass the building where Dostoevsky finished The Idiot in 1868–9. Celebrated by Florentines for her support of the Risorgimento, Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived with Robert in Casa Guidi from 1847 till her death in 1861, now restored and furnished to resemble its appearance then.

Pass the boarding house where Shelly lived 1819–20 and composed Prometheus Unbound and Ode to the West Wind. Santa Croce is the burial place of the humanists Bruni, Alberti and Machiavelli, and of Michelangelo and Galileo; Dante is commemorated by a cenotaph. Stendhal’s Syndrome is named after the writer’s collapse here. The model for the Pension Bartolini in Room with a View, where E.M. Forster stayed in 1901, is nearby. In the English Cemetery lie Walter Savage Landor, Frances Trollope and Elizabeth Browning.

By special arrangement, visit La Pietra, perhaps the finest villa in the vicinity of Florence, until 1994 the home of Harold Acton, writer, aesthete and host. The little hilltop town of Fiesole, which overlooks Florence, was regarded as an essential ingredient in a cultured visitor’s itinerary. Visit the gardens of the Villa Medici, the cathedral and the convent of San Francesco.

Fly from Pisa, arriving London Gatwick c. 4.00pm. Participants in the Florence Music Festival (2011) have some free time until the festival starts tomorrow evening.