A changed room in a Florence hotel unsettles Lucy Honeychurch's expectations, beginning an encounter with love that challenges her inherited prejudices.
Florence becomes the setting for Lawrence's exploration of unstable convictions, as impulse and fractured moral assumptions unsettle the direction of a life.
McCarthy explores Florence through its art, architecture and people, setting the Renaissance city's celebrated stones within a lively historical portrait.
Michelangelo's artistic ambition meets patrons, family and political power, carrying him from Florence's workshops into the demanding commissions of Renaissance Rome.