Narrow italian streets

I've taken some pictures of those narrow streets italian cities are so full of, with that particularly atmospheric reflected light that falls in them. DR in these scenes is typically huge, as there are deep shadows and bright skies.

I'm struggling a bit to bring it out in post just like it should - I think my usual, high contrast, pop color workflow is interfering a bit with my mind's eye here. For instance, I always try not to have any blown highlights or blocked shadows in the minal proof, but in this instance it may be the better choice.

Would anyone have some properly exposed shots of similar areas for me to use as a benchmark for my own exposure post-processing?

In many cases the range will be more than the camera can capture. That's just a fact of life. When I was in Italy, I only had a P&S that only did jpeg, sot I just figured out what was important about the scene and tried to expose for that. I still had to play with them in LR to get a decent image. Here is one of the best basic exposures I got. ISO 160, 1/80 sec @ f3.2 - First is the original and second is after a few basic edits in LR4. If I had been shooting RAW then, it would have been easier to bring out more range. I could actually bring up the exposure more, but it loses the somewhat dark feel that those streets really have.