1. Pinocchio originated in Tuscany. In 1883, a Florence born man named Carlo Collodi had written the book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, long before the story was made into a hit Disney film. A local puppeteer decided to bring the character to life, and a wooden puppet version of Pinocchio was created.

A fascinating and often overlooked fact about Tuscany is that the modern Italian language was actually born there. While various dialects were spoken across the Italian peninsula for centuries, the "official" Italian that is taught in schools and spoken by the government today is based directly on the 14th-century Florentine (Tuscan) dialect. This is largely thanks to the literary giants Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose works (like the Divine Comedy) were so influential that their version of the language became the gold standard for high culture and eventually the national tongue. Another fun fact: the original story of Pinocchio was written by a Tuscan author, Carlo Collodi, in 1883, and the character's "hometown" of Collodi is a real medieval village you can visit in the northern part of the region, complete with a dedicated Pinocchio Park.