The Florence American Cemetery lies on the slope of a hill about four kilometres west of Impruneta, between the autostrada and the small road to San Casciano. It holds the graves of 4,392 American servicemen who died in the Italian campaign of the Second World War — most of them killed in the slow, brutal advance up the peninsula after the breakout from Anzio in 1944.
White marble crosses and a smaller number of Stars of David are laid out in long curving rows on a manicured lawn. A memorial wall lists more than a thousand of the missing. The site is quiet, well-kept by the American Battle Monuments Commission, and free to enter. After the noise of Florence the contrast is sharp; an hour here makes plain what the otherwise picturesque Tuscan countryside cost to liberate.