The best hot spring towns with a serious restaurant in Tuscany
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Toscana sits on hot water. It comes up through travertine and volcanic rock at bath temperature, milky with sulphur in the Maremma, clearer and more mineral in the Val d'Orcia, and it keeps coming through January when the vines are bare and the hills go the color of wet stone. The towns above these springs are built from the same rock the water runs through, pale travertine and tufo, and they smell faintly of eggs on a cold morning. Winter is the season for it: soak in the afternoon, then eat pici, wild boar, pecorino aged in ash, and a bistecca that arrives on the bone. The pairing of a long bath and a serious dinner is the oldest reason anyone came to these hills.
Most people who go to Toscana for thermal water go to Montecatini Terme, where the belle époque pump rooms and the spa hotels have been drawing coach traffic since the grand tour. It is handsome and it is busy, and the standard package is a treatment list, a buffet and a shuttle. The eating tends to be hotel eating. It is worth a look for the architecture, less so for the evening.
The springs do not stop there. The same geology runs south through Siena's clay hills and out to the coast, into towns where the bath is a public pool or a stretch of hot stream and the best table in the province happens to be a short walk away. These are the smaller places, and fewer people go to them, which is largely a matter of where the coaches turn off.
Of the 84 communes we have mapped in Toscana, 10 qualify as hot spring towns with a serious restaurant: each has natural thermal water, and each holds a restaurant listed by the most demanding of the guides. The smallest, San Casciano dei Bagni, has 1,500 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best hidden hot spring towns that eat well in Tuscany and The best hot spring towns you can reach by train in Tuscany.
Why visit San Casciano dei Bagni
San Casciano dei Bagni sits at 582 meters at the southern edge of the province of Siena, above 42 hot springs that average 42 degrees Celsius. The baths were used continuously from Etruscan through Roman times and again from the Renaissance, when visitors came from across Europe.
In 2022, an excavation that began in 2019 at the ancient sanctuary turned up 24 bronze votive statues protected by mud, with around 6,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze. The find was the largest of its kind in fifty years; most surviving Etruscan votive material is terracotta.
The 1,500 residents live on a basalt outcrop above the Roman thermal complex, in a centro storico of stone houses and three small churches. The borgo joined the Borghi più belli network in 2014 and remains one of the smallest communes in Toscana to carry both that label and Bandiera Arancione.
Daniela (MICHELIN) and Castello di Fighine (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.
What to see in San Casciano dei Bagni
- Santuario Ritrovato. Etruscan-Roman thermal sanctuary excavated since 2019, where 24 bronze votives and around 6,000 coins were recovered in 2022.
- Bagno Grande. The principal natural pool of the 42 hot springs, used from the second century BC through the Renaissance and reopened to the public.
- Collegiata di San Leonardo. Romanesque parish church in the centro storico, restored in the seventeenth century, with a baptismal font carved from local travertine.
How to get to San Casciano dei Bagni
Perugia is about 1 h 8 min away by road.
Our tip
The thermal pools make the calendar different here. Winter is the season many visitors prefer, when the 42-degree water steams against cold air and snow occasionally dusts the basalt outcrop. April through June and September into October are the most balanced months: warm hill light, the dry-stone walls of the borgo at their best, the sanctuary excavations open to guided tours.
Why visit Rapolano Terme
The comune sits at 334 meters on the eastern edge of the clay hills, twenty kilometers east of Siena. It was called simply Rapolano until 1949, when the spa industry pushed the name change, a shift that marks how thoroughly the waters came to define the place.
The thermal facilities and the quarry sit at some distance from each other within the comune: the springs rise near the centro and to its south, while the travertine beds lie in the Serre frazione three kilometers further out, a separate settlement built around the stone rather than the water. The medieval centro storico, meanwhile, holds no thermal or mineral history at all: a fortified perimeter, a Sienese-period castello on the highest point, and a parish church founded in the eleventh century, all predating the spa industry by centuries.
The clay-hill landscape spreads north and west of the comune, and draws most visitors past the spa itself. What emerges is a town built on two extractive industries, water and stone, wrapped around an older walled settlement that has little to do with either.
Osteria Il Granaio is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.
What to see in Rapolano Terme
- Terme Antica Querciolaia. Six outdoor pools at 38 degrees, the older of the two facilities and the one tied to a general's convalescence.
- Terme San Giovanni. Thermal complex south of the centro among the clay hills of the Crete Senesi, with outdoor pools facing vineyards and olive groves.
- Cave di travertino di Serre. Active quarries in the Serre di Rapolano frazione three kilometers south, the source of the stone behind the Pienza Duomo's façade.
How to get to Rapolano Terme
It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 1 h 3 min away by road. The full route from Florence.
Our tip
Thermal towns work year-round and Rapolano is the rare Sienese commune where winter is a season. The pools at Antica Querciolaia and San Giovanni stay open through the cold months and the steam off the 38-degree water against the December clay hills is the postcard the spa industry sells. April through June and September into October are the wider best months, with the Crete Senesi at full color and the surrounding wine and olive harvests pulling traffic through the centro.
Why visit San Quirico d'Orcia
San Quirico d'Orcia sits at 409 meters on a low rise in the Val d'Orcia, the rolling clay-and-tufa landscape inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 as a cultural landscape shaped by fourteenth and fifteenth-century Sienese governance. The town was a stage on Sigeric the Serious's tenth-century Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome and has remained a working stop on the route ever since.
The Collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta was built at the end of the twelfth century over an eighth-century baptistery; the lateral portal added in 1288 is attributed to Giovanni Pisano, then working on the Siena cathedral. The Horti Leonini, the geometric boxwood garden laid out by Diomede Leoni around 1580 inside the town walls, hosts the Forme nel Verde sculpture exhibition every summer since 1971.
Bagno Vignoni, the frazione five kilometers down the road, has a thermal pool at the center of its piazza, used since Etruscan times. Few comuni this small carry UNESCO, thermal and Francigena signals at once.
Trattoria Toscana al Vecchio Forno (MICHELIN) and Da Ciacco (MICHELIN) are listed in food guides.
What to see in San Quirico d'Orcia
- Collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta. Romanesque parish church built late twelfth century over an eighth-century baptistery, with the 1288 lateral portal attributed to Giovanni Pisano.
- Horti Leonini. Italianate boxwood garden laid out by Diomede Leoni around 1580 inside the town walls, hosting the Forme nel Verde sculpture exhibition since 1971.
- Bagno Vignoni. Frazione five kilometers south, with a sixteenth-century thermal pool at the center of its piazza, fed by springs used since Etruscan times.
How to get to San Quirico d'Orcia
Perugia is about 1 h 36 min away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the gold months in the Val d'Orcia: green wheat in spring, ochre stubble by autumn, low light that defines the cypress ridges. The Festa del Barbarossa runs the third Sunday of June with archery, jousts and crossbow contests between the town quarters. July and August are hot and busy; the centro storico fills with day-trippers from Pienza and Montalcino.
Why visit Manciano
Manciano sits at 444 meters on a hill in the southern Maremma grossetana, with a 360-degree view that runs from Monte Amiata north to the Tyrrhenian coast. The Aldobrandeschi held the original stronghold from the twelfth century.
Siena occupied the town between 1419 and 1455 and built the Rocca that still dominates the centro storico, a square keep with battlements on a shoe-base. After 1455 it returned to local rule and passed eventually to the Medici Grand Duchy.
The comune is large by Toscana standards and includes some of the best-known places of the southern Maremma: Saturnia, the Etruscan town built around its sulphurous hot springs, and Montemerano, a small walled borgo on the road to the Lago di Bolsena. The Albegna and Fiora valleys, which the town once served as a regional market, still meet at its foot.
Wine, olive oil and wild boar work the territory in roughly the order they sit on a Maremmano menu.
Caino (MICHELIN and La Liste), I Due Cippi dal 1976 (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), La Filanda (MICHELIN) and 1 more place are listed in food guides.
What to see in Manciano
- Rocca Aldobrandesca. Sienese fortress of 1424 on Aldobrandeschi foundations, square keep, walls with battlements and a solid shoe-base, dominating the centro storico.
- Saturnia. Etruscan town and frazione south of Manciano, with medieval walls, remains of a Roman road and the sulphurous hot springs used since antiquity.
- Montemerano. Small walled borgo east of Manciano, three concentric circles of streets and a fifteenth-century Madonna della Gattaiola in the parish church.
How to get to Manciano
Terni is about 2 h 12 min away by road.
✷ We have written about Manciano
“Everyone driving from Florence down to Rome crosses the Maremma without noticing, because there is nothing on that stretch to make them slow down. The hills give out. The cypresses stop. What opens up instead is flat open country, wheat and grass running off to a few low rises, the least Tuscan-looking part of Tuscany, a landscape you would call dull if you were being honest and which most guidebooks solve by leaving out.”
Read our piece on Manciano →Maremma | The Last Cowboys of Tuscany
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Manciano shows the southern Maremma at its best, the territory dry but green, the Saturnia pools warm against cool mornings. The Sagra dell'Anatra runs in mid-August. July and August are hot at 444 meters but easier than the coast; afternoons in the centro storico empty between two and six.
Why visit Castelnuovo Berardenga
The commune sits east of Siena, where the hills give way to the clay swells of the Crete Senesi. The name comes from the Terra Berardinga, the area controlled in the tenth century by a Frankish nobleman named Berardo, and the borgo grew up around the castle walls the Sienese Republic raised against Florence.
The centro storico, the villa and gardens at its heart, and the surrounding zone of vineyards form one continuous pattern rather than separate parts: fortress town above, wine country falling away below it toward the clay hills. Across the wider territory, 13 castles, 70 churches and 200 farms record the medieval pattern of the Sienese contado, a scatter of small fortified points and parish churches administering land rather than one dominant center.
The place reads as a border post that outlived its military purpose and settled into agriculture and the arts, its castle now a clock tower, its noble villa now a music foundation, its walls now overlooking rows of Sangiovese.
Il Visibilio (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Poggio Rosso (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), L'Asinello (MICHELIN and L'Espresso) and 4 more places are listed in food guides.
What to see in Castelnuovo Berardenga
- Villa Chigi Saracini. Eighteenth-century villa and Italian garden inside the centro storico, its park designed by the Sienese composer Guido Chigi Saracini, whose family foundation still runs the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.
- Torre dell'Orologio. Surviving tower of the fortress, now bearing the civic clock, the highest visible point of the centro storico.
- Chiesa dei Santi Giusto e Clemente. Eighteenth-century parish church with a neoclassical façade, built on the site of an earlier Romanesque pieve.
How to get to Castelnuovo Berardenga
Firenze is about 1 h 17 min away by road. The full route from Florence.
✷ We have written about Castelnuovo Berardenga
“The wine is the whole economy of these hills, every village with its own, the region’s name stamped on the most famous red in Italy. Tuscan food runs to cured and roasted meat, so the wine ran red to meet it, lighter than you expect, almost fruity, easy, made to sit beside a steak and not to be lectured about. Here is the only wine knowledge you need on this road: it is all good.”
Read our piece on Castelnuovo Berardenga →Road to Siena | The Long Way Is the Better Way
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Chianti Classico shows best, the green hills moving toward the gold of harvest. The Sagra del Vino runs the second weekend of September. July and August push past thirty and the centro storico empties between two and six; the cellars on the surrounding hills offer cool tastings and longer rentals.
Why visit Montepulciano
The ridge runs between the Val di Chiana and the Val d'Orcia, 70 kilometers southeast of Siena, and the town follows its spine uphill: streets climb from the gates toward the high point, where the main square sits ringed by the buildings that define the skyline from below. The origin predates the Renaissance fabric by centuries.
Etruscan tombs survive in the surrounding hills, though almost nothing of that period shows in the centro storico itself, which was rebuilt wholesale in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries over whatever came before. The wine and the festival both use the climb as their setting rather than their subject: the cellars are cut into the rock beneath the palazzi, keeping a constant temperature for aging, and the barrel race each August sends two men from each of the eight contrade hauling an eighty-kilogram cask up the same gradient that every visitor covers on foot, only slower.
The steepness that shaped the defensive site nine centuries ago is still what a person feels first, in the legs, before the buildings register at all.
Ristorante Caffè Pasticceria Poliziano (Locali Storici), Osmosi (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Le Logge del Vignola (MICHELIN) and 3 more places are listed in food guides.
What to see in Montepulciano
- Tempio di San Biagio. A 13-meter dome and travertine façade standing alone outside the walls, the ground falling away below it so the building reads as a single volume against the hillside.
- Piazza Grande. The high piazza at the top of the ridge, ringed by the Duomo, the Palazzo Comunale and the Palazzo Tarugi, all rebuilt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
- Palazzo Comunale. Town hall designed by Michelozzo in the fifteenth century, its tower offering a view over the Val di Chiana and Val d'Orcia.
How to get to Montepulciano
It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 57 min away by road. The full route from Florence.
✷ We have written about Montepulciano
“Now, the postcard itself, the towns, and here I have less to say than you would expect, because Pienza and Montepulciano have become, and I mean this precisely, the canteens of a theme park. They are where you go to park, walk a pretty street, use the toilet, refill the water, eat a plate of something, and buy a thing to take home. They are the food court between the rides.”
Read our piece on Montepulciano →Val d'Orcia | The Postcard Is Constructed
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the working months on the ridge: vine work in the surrounding hills, mild days, evening light that lingers over the Val d'Orcia. July and August push into the low thirties and the climb to Piazza Grande slows even the residents. The Bravìo delle Botti runs the last Sunday of August and fills the town.
Why visit Orbetello
The isthmus runs out into the lagoon and splits it into two basins, Ponente and Levante. Two sand tombolos close the shape from either side: Giannella to the north, Feniglia to the south, both reaching toward the Monte Argentario promontory and meeting it at either end.
The Etruscans settled the site first, the Romans followed with their colony of Cosa nearby, and centuries later the Spanish took the isthmus as the seat of their coastal enclave, leaving the Governor's Palace on the main square where it still stands. Of the nine Sienese windmills once built out in the water, one remains in place, the only Italian water-and-wind mill of its type still fixed where it was built.
The lagoon that once carried Balbo's flying boats out toward Rio and Chicago now carries a WWF reserve and the nets of a bottarga and eel cooperative working the same waters since 1965. A town built on the water it is named for, held between two arms of sand and one mountain it never quite touches.
L'Oste Dispensa (MICHELIN and Slow Food) and Osteria Bolle (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.
What to see in Orbetello
- Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. Fourteenth-century cathedral with a Gothic travertine façade, rebuilt over an earlier Etruscan-Roman temple foundation.
- Fortificazioni Spagnole. The bastions and the Polveriera Guzman magazine, still standing along the edges of the historic center.
- Laguna di Orbetello. The brackish water splits into two basins and is now a WWF reserve and Ramsar wetland.
How to get to Orbetello
It has its own railway station. Roma is about 2 h 4 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through September is when the lagoon and the Feniglia and Giannella beaches do their work. June brings the migratory bird count back up: flamingos, herons, avocets. July and August push temperatures over thirty degrees and the tombolos fill with Roman day-trippers, so the lagoon path on the Ponente side stays the quieter option.
Why visit San Giuliano Terme
San Giuliano Terme sits at 10 meters at the southern foot of Monte Pisano, ten kilometers north of Pisa. The name Aquae Pisanae was the ancient one for the springs that rise here, and the town's own name records the later dedication to San Giuliano rather than to Pisa, though the waters remain tied to the city below by the aqueduct that still carries them there.
The frazioni climb the slope of Monte Pisano itself, olive groves stepping up the lower ground while the plain beneath opens into the pine forests and dunes of the Parco di Migliarino-San Rossore-Massaciuccoli, so the comune runs in one line from mountain ridge to coastal flat with the spa town fixed at the hinge between them. What holds the place together is water moving downhill: from the spring, through the baths where the waters were taken, along the arches to Pisa, and out across the plain toward the sea.
Locanda Sant'Agata is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.
What to see in San Giuliano Terme
- Bagni di Pisa. The restored complex occupies the eighteenth-century Lorena baths, its rooms the ones where Byron, Shelley and Leopardi lodged while taking the waters.
- Acquedotto Mediceo. The line of arches runs from the springs of Asciano down to Pisa, parallel to the modern road, still legible as a single continuous structure across the plain.
- Monte Pisano. The granite ridge above the town, with olive groves on the lower slopes and trails leading to Rocca della Verruca.
How to get to San Giuliano Terme
It has its own railway station. The full route from Pisa.
✷ We have written about San Giuliano Terme
“By the sea, cold hits differently. When that flat grey sky arrives, it means two things in our house: a big pot of bollito, and a thermal bath. The problem is finding one, the whole apparatus, multiple pools, the salt pool, sauna, steam room, mud, the entire game. For us, that means San Giuliano Terme, at the foot of Monte Pisano, and the Bagni di Pisa.”
Read our piece on San Giuliano Terme →Bagni di Pisa | The Tuesday Cure
Our tip
The thermal town runs year-round. Winter is the original spa season, with the warm pools welcome against the cold air off the Monte Pisano. April through June and September into October are the dry mild months for combining a spa stay with walks on Monte Pisano and the Parco di San Rossore.
Why visit Grosseto
Grosseto sits on the right bank of the Ombrone, ten meters above sea level and twelve kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian. The Roman city of Roselle was destroyed in 935 by Saracen pirates; refugees regrouped on the plain below and Grosseto inherited the bishopric.
From 1336 it was Sienese; in 1559 it passed to the Medici after the battle of Montalcino. Cosimo I commissioned Baldassarre Lanci to replace the medieval walls with a hexagonal bastioned circuit, begun in 1565 and finished a decade later.
The walls are intact. Six bastions, two main gates, a continuous earthwork four kilometers around, now planted and used as the city's promenade.
Inside, the Duomo di San Lorenzo holds a Romanesque-Gothic façade in alternating white and pink marble. The Cassero Senese, the Sienese fortress of 1345 swallowed into the later Medici walls, anchors the southeast corner.
Grosseto is the largest city of southern Toscana and the working capital of the Maremma.
L'Uva e il Malto (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Canapone (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Oste Scuro (Slow Food) and 1 more place are listed in food guides.
What to see in Grosseto
- Mura Medicee. Hexagonal bastioned circuit commissioned by Cosimo I in 1564, designed by Baldassarre Lanci, intact and walkable for the full four kilometers.
- Duomo di San Lorenzo. Thirteenth-century cathedral with a façade in alternating white and pink marble, Latin-cross plan, semicircular apse over the nave.
- Cassero Senese. Travertine-clad Sienese fortress completed in 1345, incorporated into the southeast corner of the Medici walls, now used for exhibitions.
How to get to Grosseto
It has its own railway station. Livorno is about 1 h 50 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.
Our tip
May, September and October are the Maremma months. The walls and the Parco Regionale are open without the heat, the umbrella pines hold their shade, and the wild horses are visible at dawn near the Ombrone mouth. July and August push past thirty-five degrees and the city empties between one and six in the afternoon.
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 harbor; 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.
Azzighe Osteria a metà (MICHELIN and Slow Food), Nannini (MICHELIN), Oscar (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and 2 more places are listed in food guides.
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
It has its own railway station. The full route from Pisa.
✷ We have written about Livorno
“I lived in Naples for weeks once, and those days remain among the best I have had, and the people there are among the finest I have met anywhere in this country, and I love the place without reservation. Naples is the same love story as Livorno.”
Read our piece on Livorno →Livorno | The City With No Time For You
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.
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