Under the Tuscan Sun · Guide
Is Under the Tuscan Sun a True Story?
Short answer: the book is a true story. The film mostly isn’t.
Frances Mayes really did buy a neglected villa called Bramasole on the hillside outside Cortona, and her 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy is a factual account of restoring it. The 2003 film starring Diane Lane keeps the house, the town and the title — and invents nearly everything else, including the divorce that sets the whole story in motion.
If you came to this page because the film made you want to visit Cortona, the good news is that the place is entirely real. This is our guide to Under the Tuscan Sun in Cortona.
What actually happened
In 1989, Frances Mayes — then a poet and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University — bought an abandoned villa in the hills above Cortona, in the Province of Arezzo. The house had sat empty for thirty years. She and her partner Ed Kleinschmidt, also a poet, spent years restoring it, returning summer after summer.
She wrote about it. Under the Tuscan Sun appeared in 1996, sold in enormous numbers, and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. She followed it with Bella Tuscany and Every Day in Tuscany. Mayes and Kleinschmidt married in 1998 — he took her surname — and she has since become an Italian citizen. Bramasole is still theirs.
That’s the story. There is no divorce, no impulsive escape, and no Marcello.
What the film changed
Director Audrey Wells kept the premise — a woman buys a Tuscan villa on impulse — and built a new film around it.
| In the film | In reality |
|---|---|
| Frances is blindsided by a divorce and flees to Italy alone | Mayes was already divorced. She bought Bramasole with her partner Ed |
| She buys the villa on a whim, heartbroken and rudderless | She and Ed had been looking for a property in Tuscany deliberately |
| A romance with Marcello, a handsome Positano local | No Marcello. The memoir contains no love story |
| Katherine, a glamorous Fellini-quoting British expat | Invented for the film |
| Pawel and the Polish workmen, and Pawel’s wedding | Invented; the wedding was filmed in Montepulciano, not Cortona |
| Ed does not exist | Ed is central to the real restoration and to the book |
The film also quietly rearranged the geography. The famous fountain scene in Piazza Signorelli was shot around a fountain that isn’t there — the production built a fake one and removed it afterwards, which has been confusing visitors ever since. The flag-throwing festival isn’t Cortona’s either; that’s Montepulciano’s Piazza Grande. We’ve mapped all of it in our guide to the Under the Tuscan Sun filming locations.
Why the two versions feel so different
The memoir is not a story in the conventional sense. It has no antagonist and barely a plot. It’s a book about plaster and lemon trees, about the Saturday market, about learning which neighbour to ask about the olive harvest, about what you cook in October. Whole chapters are recipes. The pleasure is in the accumulation of detail.
That’s very hard to film. So Wells did what adaptations usually do with plotless books: kept the mood and the location, and bolted on a three-act structure with a romance in it. The result is a perfectly enjoyable film that bears roughly the relationship to the book that a postcard bears to a long letter.
What the film got right
More than you’d think, once you set the plot aside:
- The tabernacles. The little roadside shrines kept stocked with fresh flowers are a real and living custom around Cortona.
- The olive harvest. The rhythm of it, and its social weight, is accurately observed.
- The Saturday market. It genuinely is the centre of the week — though the film dressed its extras in 1950s clothing, so the on-screen version looks several decades out of time.
- The town itself. Cortona’s streets, squares and long views over the Val di Chiana are the real thing, filmed on location.
So should you read the book or watch the film?
Both, in that order, if you’re planning a trip.
The film will make you want to go. The book will tell you what it’s actually like when you get there — the heat, the bureaucracy, the neighbours, the food, the specific quality of the light that gave Bramasole its name. If you only have time for one and you’re coming to Cortona, read the book.
And if you want to know what bramasole actually means and where the house really is, we’ve written that up separately: Bramasole, explained.
Planning a visit
The town is genuinely worth the trip, film or no film. Start with our complete Cortona travel guide for what to see and how to get here, or go straight to where to stay in Cortona — and note that you can actually book a night in the villa the film used, which we cover in the filming locations guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Under the Tuscan Sun a true story?
The book is. Frances Mayes really did buy an abandoned villa called Bramasole outside Cortona in 1989 and spend years restoring it, and her 1996 memoir is a factual account of that. The 2003 film is only loosely based on it — it keeps the villa and the setting but invents the divorce, the romance and almost everything that happens in the plot.
Did Frances Mayes really buy a villa in Italy alone after a divorce?
No — that's the film's invention. Mayes was already divorced from her first husband when she bought Bramasole, and she bought it with her partner Ed Kleinschmidt, a fellow poet who later became her husband. She did not arrive in Cortona heartbroken and alone; the restoration was a shared project from the start.
Is Marcello a real person?
No. The romance with Marcello, played by Raoul Bova, does not appear in the book and did not happen. The memoir has no love story in it at all — it is about restoring a house, learning a place, and cooking and eating through the seasons.
Is Bramasole a real house?
Yes, Bramasole is real and Frances Mayes still owns it. But it is not the house you see in the film. Because Mayes had already restored Bramasole by the time production began, the crew needed a property that still looked neglected, so they filmed at Villa Laura, a different villa a few kilometres from Cortona.
Is the book better than the film?
They are doing different jobs. The book is a slow, sensory memoir about place, food and restoration with almost no plot — read it if you want the real Cortona. The film is a warm romantic comedy that uses the setting as a backdrop — watch it for the scenery. Readers expecting the film's story from the book are usually surprised.