Students live in San Giovanni Valdarno, a small 14th century town in the heart of Tuscany.
San Giovanni is an original medieval town with typical late Renaissance Tuscan architecture.
The town is situated on the Florence – Rome train line, 30 minutes from Florence, 30 minutes from Arezzo and 3 hours from Rome.
Tuscany is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Botticelli were all born here.
The major city is Florence.
Tuscany is located in Central Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea, approximately on the "front shin" of Italy.
The region is known for its sunny hillsides, small towns, castles, villas, vineyards, and olive trees.
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Although we are accustomed to thinking of Italy as a place with a very long history, the Republic of Italy is actually quite young.
Unified in 1861 by Giovanni Garibaldi from a variety of warring kingdoms, city-state and republics, Italy took its present-day shape.
The Renaissance is said to have begun in 14th-century Italy and spread throughout Europe and the rest of the Western world.
Nearly every artistic movement since then has had an impact on Italy.
Today, Italy has the 7th-largest economy in the world, although the economic health of the country varies greatly from region to region.
Art, fashion, tourism and automotive industries remain the pillars of the Italian economy.
Pop: 59.3 million
Language: Italian
Currency: Euro
National holiday: Festival of the Republic, June 2
Local time: GMT+1 (6 hours ahead of Washington DC)
Just after WWII, the governing leaders of France and Germany realized the need for a cooperative organization that would essentially make war in Europe impossible. In 1951 the first European organization was born, the European Coal and Steel Community, with six members. As one of the six, Italy has been a pillar of the European push for integration and unity.
The EU represents perhaps the most successful intragovernmental and supranational cooperation in history. In a territory that extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern border of Russia and from the Arctic Circle to the small islands of the Mediterranean, member states of the EU have pledged to:
free movement of persons within the territory
free movement of capital within the territory
a common currency and common monetary policies
a common foreign and security policy
Currently, the European Union has 27 member countries.
The euro is not yet the official currency in all of them, but is slated to become so within approximately ten years.
