The 6 best coastal towns inside a nature park in Toscana
The Tuscan coast is at its best where the pine forest reaches the sand. Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli hold the dunes, the shallow lake and the umbrella pines north of the Arno; the Val di Cornia parks hold the macchia, the Etruscan iron workings and the promontory falling into clear water south of it; the Apuan Alps rise behind Versilia in white marble quarried since Roman times. The food follows the geography, cacciucco and anchovies and cee at the port towns, wild boar and chestnut flour in the hills a short drive inland, and the season stretches from the wisteria of April to the warm still water of September. Houses are built from grey pietra serena, from local sandstone, from marble offcuts where marble is what the ground gives. Bathing establishments, fishing harbours and protected woodland sit within a few kilometres of each other.
The default plan is Forte dei Marmi in August, or the ferry from the mainland out to Elba, and both are busy for reasons that are easy to understand. Forte has the designer shopping, the Wednesday market and the long tidy rows of beach clubs; Elba has the coves and the clear water everyone photographs. Parking is hard, the beach umbrellas are booked well in advance, and prices on the seafront reflect the demand. Neither is a mistake, but neither is the only version of this coastline.
The same protected sea and the same pines continue north and south past the famous stretch, and that is where these towns are. Fewer people go to the river mouths, the working ports and the hill towns that hold a slice of park along with their beach, though all of them are easy enough to reach by train or by a short drive from Pisa or Livorno. What they share is unusual: each one meets the sea directly, and each one lies inside a regional nature park, so the coast in front of them is regulated land rather than a continuous line of concrete.
Of the 84 communes we have mapped in Toscana, 6 qualify as coastal towns inside a nature park: each sits directly on the sea, and each sits inside a regional nature park. The smallest, Seravezza, has 12,364 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best towns inside a nature park that you can reach by train in Toscana and The 7 best towns inside a nature park that have a serious restaurant in Toscana.
Seravezza
Why visit Seravezza
Seravezza sits at 100 meters where the Vezza and Serra streams meet, in Versilia Storica, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian. The territory was contested between Pisa, Lucca, Genoa and Florence for centuries before passing to the Medici, and the town's position at the junction of the two watercourses, with the mountains at its back and the coast within reach, explains why it mattered enough for all four to want it.
Michelangelo spent three years on Monte Altissimo behind the town, found his veins of white stone, and built a road to take it down toward the sea. Half a century later Cosimo I commissioned the Palazzo Mediceo here, a summer residence rather than a fortress, which says something about how settled Medici rule had become by the time it was built.
The two episodes, a papal quarry and a ducal villa, sit one above the other on the same small territory: the mountain supplied the stone that Florence wanted, and the valley below became a place worth building a palace in once the stone trade had made the route familiar.
What to see in Seravezza
- Palazzo Mediceo. The residence stands in the centro, its design passed from one architect to the next as the project went on. It carries the UNESCO listing among the Medici Villas.
- Pieve di San Martino alla Cappella. Eleventh-century Romanesque parish church between Seravezza and Azzano, with the ruined Annunziata Oratory alongside.
- Monte Altissimo. The peak rises behind the town at 1,589 meters. The road Michelangelo built to bring the stone down still marks the route from quarry to valley, and the mountain is worked as a quarry to this day.
How to get to Seravezza
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pisa is roughly 63 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the working Versilia season, the inland equivalent of the coastal months at Forte dei Marmi and Pietrasanta six kilometers away. June and September are the best moments to walk up to the Cappella and Azzano: the mountain trails open, the marble quarries above visible from below. July and August are hot in the lower town but cool on the slopes, and the Apuan rains hold off until late September.
Livorno
Why visit Livorno
Livorno is the Tuscan coast you don't expect: Medici-founded in 1577 as Nova Civitas, planned from scratch by Bernardo Buontalenti as a free port to rival Genoa and Venice, and unique among Tuscan cities for being entirely a Renaissance-era invention rather than a medieval inheritance. The original pentagonal city walls enclosed a Venetian-style quarter (Venezia Nuova) laced with navigable canals where merchant warehouses opened directly to the water — Jews, Greeks, Armenians, English, Dutch and North Africans were all invited to settle under the 1591–1593 'Livornine' laws granting freedom of worship and trade, making Livorno the most cosmopolitan port on the Mediterranean for two centuries.
What you see today: Fortezza Vecchia (1521) and Fortezza Nuova (1590) guarding the inner harbour; the four bronze Moors (1626) chained to the base of Ferdinando I's monument facing the port; the Terrazza Mascagni (a 1925 Art Deco chequerboard promenade with 4,100 black-and-white tiles facing the Tyrrhenian); the Cattedrale rebuilt after 1944 bombing; the Pentagono di Buontalenti street grid still visible from above. The Macchiaioli painters' movement was born here in the 1860s (Fattori, Lega, Signorini all lived and painted the local light).
Modigliani was born in Livorno in 1884. And the food: cacciucco — a 5-fish stew with toasted bread and red wine, the city's totemic dish — plus ponce alla livornese (rum-spiked coffee) at the Caffè Civili.
The Tuscan archipelago (Capraia, Gorgona, Elba) ferries out from the port within view of the promenade.
The beach here holds the national bathing award, which a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.
What to see in Livorno
- Terrazza Mascagni. A 1925 Art Deco seafront promenade with 4,100 black-and-white tiles facing the open Tyrrhenian — locals call it the world's most beautiful balcony, especially at sunset.
- Venezia Nuova quarter. The Medici-planned canal district from 1629. Walkable bridges, warehouse-doors-on-water, and the Effetto Venezia summer festival turn it into Tuscany's Venice.
- Quattro Mori (Monumento dei Quattro Mori). Pietro Tacca's four bronze Moors (1626) chained to the base of Grand Duke Ferdinando I's statue facing the port. Livorno's civic icon.
How to get to Livorno
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Livorno is roughly 11 minutes away by road.
Our tip
Livorno is a true year-round port city, but the sweet spot is April–June and September–October. May and June have the warm Tyrrhenian light, the Effetto Venezia festival (last week of July) brings the canal quarter alive at night, and September is still beach-warm without the crowds. July and August get hot and the port traffic peaks. Effetto Venezia falls in July.
Campiglia Marittima
Why visit Campiglia Marittima
Campiglia Marittima sits at 231 meters on the last slopes of the Colline Metallifere above the Val di Cornia, eight kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast and 60 kilometers southeast of Livorno. The Rocca occupies the highest point at 281 meters, a fortified semicircle whose 14th-century tower and town walls trace the medieval defensive line.
The territory has been mined since the Etruscans: copper, silver, lead and tin from the hills behind town, worked continuously until the last galleries closed in 1976. The Parco Archeominerario di San Silvestro, opened in 1996 on 450 hectares behind the town, centers on Rocca San Silvestro, a tenth and eleventh-century miners' village abandoned in the fourteenth century and excavated since 1984.
Visitors enter through restored galleries on a small electric train. Down on the plain the DOC Val di Cornia produces Sangiovese and Cabernet, and the thermal springs at Venturina, the frazione south of town, have flowed since Roman use as Aquae Populoniae.
What to see in Campiglia Marittima
- Rocca di Campiglia. Fortified semicircle at 281 meters with the 14th-century tower, walls and the Pieve di San Giovanni, the highest point of the town.
- Parco Archeominerario di San Silvestro. 450-hectare park behind town, opened 1996, with restored mining galleries, a small electric train, and the abandoned medieval miners' village of Rocca San Silvestro.
- Centro storico. Walled hilltop borgo of stone houses, with Piazza della Repubblica at its center, the medieval gates Porta a Mare and Porta Fiorentina still intact.
How to get to Campiglia Marittima
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Livorno is roughly 67 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the season on the Val di Cornia: warm days, sea breezes that climb the hill, harvest of Sangiovese and Vermentino from late August. The beaches at San Vincenzo and Baratti are eight to fifteen kilometers away and pull the day-traffic. July and August are hot and busy on the coast; the borgo on the hill stays a few degrees cooler.
Piombino
Why visit Piombino
Piombino sits on a triangular promontory pointing southeast into the Tyrrhenian, at the northern edge of the Maremma. The town was founded in the ninth century by refugees from the Etruscan port after Greek pirates attacked the city; they called the new settlement Populino, small Populonia, and the name shortened over time to what it is now.
The old city, now a frazione north on the coast, became the source of the newer town's name rather than the other way round. In the medieval period Piombino became an independent signoria under the Appiani, who ruled from here over a small state that reached out to the islands across the water.
The castle at the seafront, the piazza cantilevered out over the cliff toward Elba, and the working ferry port make up the contemporary town, each looking the same direction the refugees once looked back from: toward the older settlement to the north and the channel to the islands beyond it. The Bandiera Blu coast covers the four kilometers between the port and the old acropolis, so that the walk from new town to old runs along the same shoreline that separates them by name only.
The beach here holds the national bathing award, which a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.
What to see in Piombino
- Castello di Piombino. Principal defensive fortress of the city on a headland pointing southeast into the sea, with the Torrione, the Rivellino and the Cittadella complex, now a museum.
- Piazza Bovio. Long rocky breakwater extending into the sea as La Rocchetta, terraced as a piazza, with a balcony view across the channel to Elba.
- Parco Archeologico di Baratti e Populonia. Chamber tombs from the seventh to second centuries BC cut into the ground of the Gulf of Baratti, laid out for walking among the excavated structures rather than viewed from a distance.
How to get to Piombino
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Livorno is roughly 77 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Piombino
“That is the thing the young man on the beach did not see, and the man who lives here cannot stop seeing. This is an industrial coast wearing a beach towel. Run it back far enough and the whole of it, the swamp and the steel and the slag and the white water, is one long story about iron, and the holiday is the costume the story put on after the work ran out.”
Read our piece on Piombino →The Iron Coast | The Wrong Sea
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months when the Piombino promontory is at its best, sea warm enough to swim and the ferry to Elba running every hour without the August crush. July and August are full season, with the centro storico filling by late morning and the Baratti beach turning over twice a day. November through March is cold and windy on the promontory, with limited ferry crossings and many seaside trattorie closed. Sagra del Pesce - Piombino falls in July.
Viareggio
Why visit Viareggio
Viareggio sits at sea level on the Versilia coastal plain, the largest commune on the Tuscan riviera. The first parade ran in 1873, organized by middle-class residents as a float procession down the seafront; the masked protest against tax policy that followed gave the event its character.
The mascot's colour scheme, red and white, was taken from the beach umbrellas that line the shore, a detail that ties the Carnival's invented figure back to the town's own beach culture rather than to any outside tradition. The rail link to Lucca and Florence arrived in 1890, and the city turned into a Belle Époque resort in response: the seafront was rebuilt in the ornamented style of that era over the following decades.
The Magazzini Duilio 48 along Viale Margherita, together with the promenade's other survivors, mark out where that resort-era rebuilding is still legible today. The city's two identities sit side by side on the same stretch of shore: one built by a rail-borne resort economy, the other by a homegrown winter festival that turned into the town's defining export.
The beach here holds the national bathing award, which a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.
What to see in Viareggio
- Passeggiata Liberty. Three-kilometer Belle Époque seafront promenade lined with Stile Liberty villas, cafés and bath houses built between 1890 and 1925.
- Cittadella del Carnevale. Sixteen vast hangars where the papier-mâché floats are built year-round, with the Museo del Carnevale and the float-construction workshops open to visitors.
- Spiaggia di Viareggio. Ten-kilometer Bandiera Blu beach lined with the original bagni concessions of the Belle Époque, fine sand and shallow seabed.
How to get to Viareggio
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pisa is roughly 29 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Viareggio
“The bike lane starts at the bottom of Lido di Camaiore and runs south along the coast for about eight kilometers before it hits the pier at Viareggio, and the thing it teaches you, if you ride it often enough, is that Viareggio is a city you should almost always see from the saddle of a bicycle and never, if you can help it, from the pavement. The pavement has the crowd on it. The bike lane has the city.”
Read our piece on Viareggio →Viareggio | The cat at the end of the road
Our tip
May through September runs the season. June and September are calmer than the July-August peak when the beach concessions sell out and the parking on Lungomare fills by ten. February brings Carnival weekends and the largest crowds of the year for the parades along Viale Manin and Viale Margherita; the floats run through a full Sunday route.
Pisa
Why visit Pisa
The Arno reaches the Ligurian Sea twelve kilometers past the city, and the river is what built it: an Arsenal on its banks built galleys for the Crusades, and Mediterranean trade paid for the walled compound northwest of the centro. That compound, inscribed by UNESCO as one of the first Italian sites in 1987, gathers four buildings of the same Pisan Romanesque school in one field, the cathedral, the baptistery, the cemetery cloister and the bell tower, close enough to read as a single composition rather than a set of monuments visited separately.
The city has a second center away from that field. Piazza dei Cavalieri became the Medici political seat after the republic fell, and the university founded in 1343 keeps both squares populated with people who live and work there rather than pass through.
The Lungarni tie the two halves together physically, two quays following the river on both banks, lined with palazzi spanning the twelfth to the nineteenth century. What this adds up to is a town built in two unequal pieces: a religious and civic compound frozen at its medieval peak, and a working river city around it that never stopped adding centuries to its banks.
The beach here holds the national bathing award, which a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.
What to see in Pisa
- Torre Pendente. Finished 1372, two centuries after it began, the lean is visible from ground level without needing to climb it, south of vertical against the other three white buildings of the square.
- Duomo di Pisa. Pisan Romanesque cathedral begun 1064 by Buscheto, financed from the Mediterranean trade, with bronze doors by Bonanno Pisano and a pulpit by Giovanni Pisano.
- Battistero di San Giovanni. Largest baptistery in Italy at 54.86 meters tall, begun 1152, Romanesque base and Gothic upper level, with a pulpit by Nicola Pisano.
How to get to Pisa
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pisa is roughly 16 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Pisa
“It was a Tuesday in January, ten degrees, the kind of soft grey Tuscan winter rain that does not quite commit to being rain, and what we wanted, in a way that surprised both of us, was a bowl of Japanese noodle soup. The nearest place to get one was Pisa.”
Read our piece on Pisa →Pisa | Beyond the Tower
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months when the Lungarni are at their best, the temperature stays in the twenties, and the lines at Piazza dei Miracoli compress by mid-afternoon. The Luminara di San Ranieri, on 16 June, lights the riverbank with eighty thousand candles and is the night the city sees most. July and August are hot and humid, with the day-tripper waves from cruise ships at Livorno filling the compound from morning. Gioco del Ponte falls in June.
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The 7 best coastal towns in the province of Livorno- The best coastal towns within 90 minutes of Florence