AREZZO , 65km southeast of Florence, has a charming old quarter, unspoilt enough to catch the eye a few years back of local folk-hero and deliberate clown of Italian cinema Roberto Benigni . Many key scenes in his Oscar-winning La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful) were filmed in Arezzo, and strolling on its quiet streets is like a breath of fresh air after days spent doing battle with Florence's big-city grind.

Arezzo was a major Etruscan and Roman city, and was a prosperous independent republic in the Middle Ages, until, in 1289, its Ghibelline loyalties precipitated military defeat at the hands of Guelph Florentines. In the arts, Petrarch, Pietro Aretino and Vasari, all native Aretines, brought lasting prestige to the city, yet it was an outsider who gave Arezzo its permanent Renaissance monument - Piero della Francesca , whose extraordinary frescoes belong in the same company with Masaccio's in Florence and Michelangelo's in Rome. Today, the local economy relies on innumerable jewellers and goldsmiths (the city has the world's largest gold manufacturing plant) and on the antiques trade: Piazza Grande has showrooms filled with the sort of furniture you put in a bank vault rather than in your living room and once a month - on the first Sunday and the Saturday preceding it - a vast Fiera Antiquaria (see www.comune.arezzo.it ) occupies the square. The array of some 600 stalls is fun to browse though, but don't expect any bargains, even among the more junk-laden stalls on the fringes.