Bellosguardo - Vinci

Few places in the world situate a golf course with quite this kind of cultural weight at its back. Vinci is the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, a small Tuscan hill town in the Città Metropolitana di Firenze where the surrounding landscape of olive groves, vineyards, and terracotta-roofed farmhouses has changed remarkably little since the Renaissance. Playing golf here means playing inside one of Italy's most storied and visually compelling pockets of countryside.

Bellosguardo — the name translates roughly as "beautiful view," a promise Tuscany rarely fails to keep — sits in this terrain at par 71, a configuration that typically signals at least a couple of shorter par 4s or a single par 5 shaved from the traditional count, lending the layout a more tactical, ground-game character than a pure power test.

The broader Florentine golf scene is modest by northern European standards, which gives courses like this a pleasantly unhurried quality. For visiting golfers, the draw is as much the drive through the Valdarno countryside and the prospect of a post-round Chianti as it is the card itself.