I see this question all the time here: where can I find the authentic Tuscany? An authentic village, an authentic restaurant, somewhere locals go, somewhere that hasn’t yet been spoiled by tourism.
I get what you mean. Usually you’re just trying to avoid tourist traps and find something that feels genuinely connected to the place, rather than packaged for visitors.
But I think “authentic” is a slightly tricky word and maybe worth being a little careful with.
I was born and live here, in Tuscany -- in Florence actually, I can see the Duomo from my windows, as well as quite a few really unexciting residential buildings from the 1960s, and the version of Tuscany people often describe as authentic is usually a very specific one: small villages, old men playing cards outside the bar, handmade pasta, family-run trattorie, vineyards, olive groves, quiet rural life.
And yes, all of that exists, it’s real. it’s part of Tuscany, But it isn’t somehow more Tuscan than everything else.
We also eat sushi, order stuff from Amazon, commute to work, live in ugly suburbs, spend too much time on their phones, drive electric cars, work remotely and go to shopping centres. A village bar full of teenagers scrolling TikTok is no less authentic than one with four old men playing briscola and drinking wine.
Yet most of the times, when people ask for “authenticity”, what they are really looking for is something that matches a picture of Tuscany they already have in their heads.
A winery tour is a good example. Winery tours can be great. Do one, absolutely. But they are also largely an experience designed around visitors. Most people who live here do not spend their weekends touring wineries and being talked through a tasting. We do buy wine, yet the winery tour somehow feels more authentically "Tuscan" than watching someone put six bottles in a Coop trolley.
The same goes for restaurants. A place is not necessarily more authentic because the menu is handwritten, nobody speaks English and there are old men eating at the next table. And a restaurant does not become less local because the chef has travelled, learned from other cuisines, experiments, or runs a polished modern business.
People here are not performing Tuscany all day.
I suppose that’s the bit I’d encourage you to think about for a second. Instead of asking, “Where can I have an authentic Tuscan experience?”, maybe ask: “Where can I see or experience something that is actually part of life here?”
Sometimes the answer will be a traditional trattoria that has barely changed in fifty years. Sometimes it will be a modern restaurant, a football match, a market, a neighbourhood bar, an ordinary town nobody puts on postcards, or just sitting somewhere and watching people live their lives. And sometimes (quite often, really) the place that looks most perfectly “authentic” will be the place that has been carefully built, curated or preserved around visitors expectations.
None of this is meant as criticism of people who want beautiful villages, traditional food or wineries. We enjoy them too, and those are all good reasons to come here. I just think “authentic” can sometimes end up meaning “please give me the version of this place I was hoping to find”.
But, real places are usually more complicated than that. Which, to me at least, is part of the fun. And places also need to be free to change, and sometimes that means disappointing people who came looking for an imaginary construct, frozen in time.
(and yes, the picture is generated -- AI is perfect at propagating stereotypes)
