You have done well to find us! We offer you a unique experience of a real Tuscany, an old Tuscany, a Tuscany as yet almost untouched by tourism. Our ballooning experience will leave you with treasured memories to keep Tuscany fresh for you all year! See Tuscany from above, and then we can chat over a champagne breakfast and help you discover more of Tuscany from ground level, from the fields and lanes, from the farmyard and from the kitchen. Click here to take a virtual balloon ride! (You need to enable JavaScript to see this!)

The "Ballooning in Tuscany" idea started in 1990 when we formed the Discovery Club. The Club exists to promote the sport in the central Tuscany area near Siena, about 50 miles south of Florence. Italians have taken to the idea although most of our members -- English, German, Swiss, American, Canadian, Australian, Japanese -- are foreigners like ourselves who come to Tuscany as tourists, lured by the picture-book landscape, the long hot summers, the food and wine, and of course, for its artistic treasures.

The location of the launch site is an important element of a balloon ride. We are located in an enchanted valley, hidden below Montisi and surrounded by woods and pastures and a truffle reserve. Wild animals wander through our land -- deer, badgers, occasionally wild boar (at night!), and lots of birds -- and our own small-scale farming activities sometimes provide unexpected entertainment in the form of a gang of tiny piglets on the loose or Spike the Rooster and his flock of hens getting in the way of the inflation. From here we rise up out of the valley to get a notion of the direction that we are going to take -- north over the Crete Senesi and Siena, west to the canyons and steep valleys of the calanche, south to Pienza and the Val d'Orcia, or east over the 1000 ft wooded hills and into the Val di Chiana. It is always a gratifying moment to actually catch the wind that is going to take us somewhere. Click here for driving directions to the launch site.

This website is presented by the Associazione Discovery Club di Gargonza C.F.92007130518.