A collection of poems by various authors who were inspired by these regions of Italy. Gaia Servadio is an Italian writer, long settled in Britain, who has retained a passionate relationship with her motherland and those who have expressed this in verse. The cast she has assembled has a spell-binding intensity, so that the reader twists between Byron and Dante, flickers between the imagery drawn by St Francis, Baudelaire, Milton, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Joseph Brodsky. Through her choices we see the two opposing natures of Italy, united by their differences.

The Renaissance created a new vision of womanhood and indeed a "New Woman," proposes Gaia Servadio in this rich feast of a book. She dates the birth of this revolutionary movement to the invention of the printing press in 1456, which made books-and hence education-available to women. Central to her story are the lives of such as Vittoria Colonna, whose extraordinary mutual love with Michelangelo is told here; Tullia d'Aragona, poet and the best known courtesan of her age; and French poet Louise Labe, who fought in battle in male clothes. They are placed center stage to the Renaissance's power plays, paintings and architecture, courtesans and popes, music and manners, fashion, food, cosmetics, changing societies and the language of poetry and symbols.