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“The city was filled with the smell of paint and the scratch of ink on contracts…you couldn’t walk the streets for fear of falling into a pit or mire left by constant building…. What I hear described even now as a golden age was then simply the fashion of the day.”

SARAH DUNANT’S ENTHRALLING HISTORICAL FICTION HAS kept me up at night turning pages. I fall back hundreds of years to scents and sensations of Renaissance Florence, Venetian canals crowded with gondolas, and a convent in Ferrara where cloistered nuns sing heavenly harmonies. Women are the central characters in her captivating stories that burst with rich emotion and such fascinating details, that I’ve learned more about Italian history through these reads than any class or non-fiction book has ever taught me.

“It all began with a crisis,” Sarah tells me, from her home in London. “Number one, a relationship had broken down, and number two, I’d been writing thrillers and was ready to move on to something else, but I had no idea what that was. Now, if you’re in a crisis, it’s very important to choose the right place to have your breakdown. I chose Florence.”

Living in Florence for months, Sarah let herself get lost, to no longer be a tourist. And in her wanderings, came the questions: “What the hell really happened here five hundred years ago? What was it like to actually be walking the streets as Brunelleschi’s dome was being built? And what was it like to be female during that time?”

Sarah had loved reading historical fiction as a teenager, and went on to study history at Cambridge, when in her words, “it centered around dead white males.” But decades later, she realized there had been “a kind of revolution in history.” Women historians had begun to write about their discoveries, tapping a deep vein, uncovering court records, letters, and diaries that told stories of courtesans, nuns, married women, teenagers. Pouring over documents in the British Library, and living part-time in Florence set Sarah off on a new path. It led to her writing five bestselling books, featuring female protagonists, that bring the Italian Renaissance to life.

Sarah’s Sacred Hearts is set in Ferrara, an under-touristed town in the Emilia Romagna region, perfectly preserved with medieval and Renaissance architecture. Going beyond the major sights, such as the d’Este Castle, Sarah’s advice is to visit the convent where her story is based: Sant’ Antonio in Polesine. It belonged to Beatrice d’Este and was beautifully embellished by her noble family’s fortunes. Sarah tells me with a knock on the door you’ll be greeted by a nun of the order who is designated to greet guests, who will show you around to the huge courtyard. The highlight is inside the nun’s choir, where you’ll discover unique frescos from the school of Giotto, painted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. “They are images I’ve never seen anywhere else,” she tells me. “One is Christ climbing a ladder to the crucifix, and another is Mary and Joseph on a donkey, leaving Bethlehem, with Joseph carrying Jesus on his shoulders.”

“Discovering this place is an adventure,” Sarah says, “which is what I believe all travel should be.”

Monastery of Sant’Antonio in Polesine (www.ferraraterraeacqua.it). Check website for visiting hours. Vespers are sung at five every evening by the remaining cloistered nuns—you can listen to them through the grill. It’s not the same experience as during the Renaissance, when this convent was renowned for its choir. Nowadays only fifteen cloistered nuns are in residence, though their aged voices will give you a glimmer of the convent’s former glory.