europe to come here and to create new things and to experiment with science, with the arts, with food, with spices. so it was like you say a think tank. a think tank. or a taste tank. exactly. expert art restorer daniela murphy is sneaking me in for an audience with the most powerful medici of them all. where is he? he s right, right there. oh my. meet cosimo primo de medici. he led the family at their dizzying height in the 1500s. in this fresco undergoing restoration, he s become so powerful he s being crowned grand-duke of tuscany by the pope himself he marries an extremely wealthy woman, the spanish princess eleanor de toledo. not only does she bring a lot of money but she brings a lot of the new spices from the new world. the chocolates, the coffee, everything that is the cuisine. that s when the tomato
used to be. it s very clean. just north of the city center, in this building. not the whole thing, you understand. tucci: so our apartment was those four windows? one, two, three, four? that was us on the end there, right? yeah. joan: it was nice. tucci: you d never travelled. joan: no. my parents you know, mom and pop said, why are you going? you know. your parents, who came from italy? who came from italy it was florence, not colobraro. didn t want you to go to italy. but it worked out. it was fun. i think everybody ended up getting a great deal out of it. i came for sculpture, certainly joan with all the food, cooking. it changed everything. it changed everything. it changed everything for me, certainly. while my father was studying
this world. tucci: oh my god. it just melts in your mouth. [laughs] i m stanley tucci, i m fascinated by my italian heritage. so, i m travelling across italy to discover how the food, in each of this countries twenty regions, is as unique as the people and their past. the creations of famous tuscans are known the world over. michelangelo, i think if he were to come back today, he d be able to walk around florence. it hasn t changed. but it s the hands of the ordinary people. chef: we fold it like this. .that have crafted the incredible food here. it s like a christmas in your mouth, yeah. this is a place built on human ingenuity, mind-boggling riches and an insane amount of bread. i really don t know how they eat this much bread. it s delicious but so hot.
a very fancy festival. the one thing that everybody has in common is the food. yeah. this event is about as far as you can get from the wheat threshing festival. here florence s richest and most powerful families have gathered, as they have for centuries, to toast the city s new creative talent from chefs and musicians, to artists hoping to follow in the footsteps of da vinci and michelangelo. you are right now in a situation where, more or less 500 years ago, the medici would have done something like this. so we re going to go and have some food now. she knows me too well. really? it s a very sophisticated form of panzenella. this looks very different to the rustic bread salad we had for lunch. daniella: but it tastes of panzanella. it completely tastes of panzanella.
carrot and the butter. our eyes had been opened to some of the greatest treasures on earth and some pretty good food too. it s so good. for me, it was the start of a lifelong love affair with italy. cheers. cheers. thank you, thank you. to florence. thank you, cheers. lemons. lemons. lemons. lemons. look how nice they are. the moment you become an expedia member, you can instantly start saving on your travels. so you can go and see all those, lovely, lemony, lemons. and never wonder if you got a good deal. because you did.