Versilia

I have lived on this coast for three years, and the honest answer to where you should base yourself in Italy is here.

Versilia is the twenty-kilometre strip of sand between Pisa and Carrara, with the Apuan Alps standing behind it so close you think you could walk to them before lunch. Most travellers pass it on the motorway between Florence and the Cinque Terre. The Italians never have: Milan and Florence have been coming here every August for a century, and the coast has organised itself around them so well that it forgot to tell anyone else.

This is the road along it, driven by someone who lives on it. Viareggio and its fishermen's market, and the lake where Puccini wrote. Camaiore and the tordello. Pietrasanta, the marble town where the sculptors still work. The coast from Lido to Forte dei Marmi and the whole choreography of the bagno, explained so you do not embarrass yourself. Then up: Seravezza and the raw porcini, the hamlets of Stazzema, and Carrara and Colonnata, where the men who cut the mountain cure pork fat in its stone.

In every town, the author's own tables. Not a list: the places he goes back to, and why. Plus what to eat, when to come, when not to, and how to move.

Every place in this book is a place the author has been. Every restaurant is one he has eaten in. Where a town is overrated he says so, and you should trust the recommendations because of it.

Book 1 in the Anywhere Italy series, from the writers of the Sunday letter about the thousand Italian towns most travelers skip.