Catalog
Under the Tuscan Sun follows Frances, a San Francisco writer, who buys a run-down villa near Cortona. It was shot in Florence, Cortona, Rome, Positano and Montepulciano. The route runs from the rain at Florence Cathedral through Cortona's square and cinema, a trip to Rome and Positano, and a wedding near Montepulciano. Places are film locations, and the villa is a stand-in for the real Bramasole.
After ten years at Troy, Odysseus sets sail for his island home of Ithaca and takes another ten to get there: blown off course, he meets a man-eating Cyclops, a witch who turns his crew into pigs, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and a nymph who will not let him go, losing every ship and every companion on the way. Homer's Odyssey, composed around the late 8th century BC, has been read as a map for as long as it has been read. Already in antiquity the poem's places were linked to real coasts, mostly around Sicily and southern Italy. Those identifications are traditions, not facts, and the ancient geographer Eratosthenes doubted them all — so most pins here are marked speculative.