BY JANE DURRELL
Enquirer contributor

Tuscan cities, set in the tawny countryside, are marvels of public space. Narrow streets walled by ancient buildings proceed in curves and turns, finally opening into some piazza so perfectly proportioned that you catch your breath in pleasure.

Where to stay • Hotel Maxim, via dei Calzaiuoli 11, 50l23 Firenze (Florence). Single with bath $54-$72 per night; double with bath $78. Phone 0039-55-2174; fax 0039-55-283729; www.firenzealbergo.it/home /hotelmaxim; e mail: hotmaxim@tin.it. • Traditional Tuscany, 6/24 Morden Road, Blackheath, London SE3 OAA, U.K., handles Tuscany housing. Prices, which vary widely, are based on weekly rentals accommodating two to eight or more people. For example, La Bruciata, sleeping eight, is $1,075-$1,370 per week, depending on season. A smaller apartment, sleeping four, ranges $685- $780 per week. There is a utilities surcharge of $100-$200 per week. Phone: 011-44-0181-297-1470, fax 011-44-0181-297-8093. • Affittacamere offers rooms in private homes, about $30 per night. Information is available through tourist office in Siena, at #56 Il Campo. If you go • Costello di Nipozzano winery, outside Pontassieve on route SS 70. Informal tours and tastings for visitors, no set times. • Castello dei Conti Guidi, Poppi. Open 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 3:30- 6:30 p.m. daily. Attractive courtyard with unusual staircases; well-preserved medieval frescos. • The Roman Theatre and Museo Archeologico, Fiesole. Open 10 a.m.- 7 p.m. daily. The 3,000-seat theater, in good condition, is used for performances. In the museum are works from the Bronze Age to the Roman occupation, most excavated there. • The garden at Villa Gamberaia, via del Rossellino, 72, Settignano, Firenze. For hours, call 39-55-697205 or fax 39-55- 697027. • Trattoria Marione, via della Spada, 27, Florence. Good food,reasonably priced. Phone: 214-756. • Buca Pietro Restaurant, Vicolo S. Pietro, 4, Siena. Nice menu selections. Phone: (0577) 40 139.

If the public spaces are captivating, what about more private ones, especially the places to lay your head?

Is it possible to stay in Tuscany without paying sky-high prices, and still be comfortable? I was there for three weeks and can answer yes, and yes. The three or four kinds of lodging I sampled cost no more than $55 a night, although it's easy to pay much more.

In Florence, my pensione was three floors up (but there was an elevator), marvelously located within the city and extremely pleasant. In the countryside, my family and I rented quarters in a 15th-century palazzo. Later, on my own in Siena, I took advantage of the affittacamere program, which offers rooms in private houses.

For comparison, I spent a night in a one-star Siena hotel, priced about the same as affittacamere accommodations and providing, as it happened, a wholly unexpected shot of nostalgia.

A fine hotel

For whatever reason you've come to Florence - shopping, eating, architecture or art - the Hotel Maxim is admirably located at 11 Via Dei Calzaiuoli, on the axis between the piazzas of the cathedral and that of the Palazzo Vecchio, where the Uffizzi stands.

A taxi can't come up to the door - Calzaiuoli is a pedestrian street - but it will bring you close. The elevator takes you up three floors to the pensione, where the tiny reception area may be brightened by a gray and white cat who thinks she runs the place.

Actually, Hotel Maxin is run by Paolo Maioli, whose hair also is gray and white and who is most obliging to his guests.

Rooms are clean and inviting. They run 90,000-120,000 lire for a single, 130,000 lire for a double, both with bath.

If the expansive thousands of Italian money give you pause, remember an easy conversion: each 5,000 lire is about $3, making the Hotel Maxim's rooms $54-$72 per night for a single and $78 for a double. Breakfast is included: two large crusty rolls, butter and jam, and a pitcher of good coffee.

I made reservations through AAA Travel Agency in Cincinnati.

A country house

The country house, an hour east of Florence and near the little town of Rufina, was even less expensive. My share for two weeks, including electricity surcharges, was about $500.

Our family group of seven adults and four children had two units in Petrognano, a spacious palazzo that once was the summer palace of the bishops of Fiesole. We had the run of terraces that spread in all directions and access to country walks tempting even the most reluctant hiker.

The house looks to the south, across a grand valley where mist gathers in the mornings. Extending from its original four-square shape is a long, narrow addition that contains various apartments and some working spaces for what is still an actively managed estate. Olive oil is produced on the land, as well as the estate's own wine (we're in Chianti country here). As visitors in residence, we were given a bottle of each.

Parents and children in our group were in the unit called LaCasa Bruciata (the burnt house), a section once hit by fire that has been rebuilt with traditional thick walls and bricked arches (and modern central heating). La Bruciata's kitchen, dining room and sitting area with open fireplace are on the first floor. Four bedrooms and two baths are above, reached by an open stairway, a a dangerous magnet for the most mobile of the two babies.

The adjoining unit, where grandparents stayed, opens off a little corridor leading from La Bruciata. It fills one end of the first floor of the great house.

Its two bedrooms have meltingly lovely views to north and south, and the sitting room is dominated by a noble fireplace we put to good use, for there is no other heat in this section. The sitting room opens to a dining area at its north end, with a narrow kitchen along one side.

Furniture and appointments throughout can't be faulted. We have rented many a house where the first thing we do is find a cupboard to store the plastic flowers. Here the attractive arrangements of dried flowers remained in place.

Arrangements for the house were made through Traditional Tuscany, a London-based agency.

Petrognano was a good base for expeditions. We visited Costello di Nipozzano Winery, and another day a group went to the nearby town of Poppi, where arcaded streets led to the domestically scaled castle crowning the hill.

Fiesole, outside Florence and in easy striking distance, has a Roman theater that incorporates Etruscan ruins. Fiesole's view is famous, holding the lovely city of Florence like a flower in the hand. Find a place for coffee or chocolate or lunch with a window to the view.

Another pleasurable destination was the garden at Villa Gamberaia, outside Florence. These grounds, laid out in the 17th century, are classically Italian and open to the public but the hours are uncertain. Ring the bell and hope for the best, or call 39-55-697205.

We also went into Florence frequently. Is it necessary to say why one goes to Florence? Because the beguiling art of the Italian Renaissance is everywhere; because church architecture is less baroque than in Rome and more compatible to the modern eye; because shopping for shoes, for gloves, for paper goods is rewarding; because restaurants are rewarding, too?

If you have children in your party, I can also tell you that the merry-go-round in Florence is on the second street to the left as you go west on Via degli Strozzi, having just walked through the Piazza della Republica.

And if you go to Poppi with children you can skip the zoo (we were told it's a ''sad'' zoo) at the edge of town but don't miss the castle. It provides young and old with tangible material for fantasy.

Lunch at the hotel facing the castle in Poppi is very satisfactory if you arrive, as we did, just as the castle closes at 12:30 p.m. You need something besides a walk on those arcaded streets to while away the time until the castle reopens at 3:30 p.m.

A Siena apartment

In Siena, where the Middle Ages feel like yesterday, the trip took a different turn as I was alone again. The tourist office on the north side of Il Campo, probably the most beautiful city plaza ever, will provide a list of private homes that take guests.

The affittacamere program specializes in long stays, but in Siena there are perhaps 15 households willing to accept visitors for briefer times. Prices vary but are affordable.

Several of the homes are centrally located, although Signora Giulia Carli's apartment, where I spent several comfortable nights, is just outside the city walls. Siena is so small, and so interesting to walk in, that I never minded the 15 minutes it took to get to Il Campo.

At the apartment, I had a pretty blue and white room with a marble floor, my own key to the apartment and shared one of the two baths. But the other boarder was always gone, so it was essentially mine.

Most affittacamere proprietors speak some English, but Signora Carli did not. She gave me coffee in her sunny kitchen, talked to me about her artist daughter's paintings and called a cab for me on my last day. She was confident that if she repeated herself often enough, I would learn Italian.

My room, with Van Gogh reproductions nicely matted and framed above the bed and one of daughter Elisabetta's engaging paintings hung to meet the eye on wakening, cost 60,000 lire per night ($36) and would have dropped to 50,000 lire ($30) if I had stayed four nights instead of three.

The first night in Siena, however, I chose a one-star hotel, La Perla, centrally located and in the same price range as an affittacamere room. The room was tiny, its little bathroom claustrophobic, and the window looked out on a dismal air shaft. It cost the same as Signora Carli's room; a double 90,000 lire ($54). The next day I moved to the signora's.

But coming out of La Perla, onto the Piazza Indipendenza, invoked an astonishing jolt of memory. In my mind's eye I could see our brand-new MG TD parked there, as plainly as the Fiats and Hondas of today.

Long ago, when my husband and I were young and reckless (and childless), we quit our jobs and went to Europe. The MG we bought in London was our only piece of conspicuous consumption and we traveled about in our showy little car staying in cheap places. We must have put up at La Perla.

The point of travel, I think, is memories: the ones you make, the long ones you participate in where history goes deep, and the ones you sometimes uncover in the most unexpected places.

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