The best hot spring towns worth staying overnight in Tuscany
90 towns visited, 910 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Tuscan thermal water arrives warm out of limestone and volcanic rock, sulphurous, faintly milky, depositing pale travertine wherever it runs for long enough. The good soaking season is the cold one: November to March, when steam sits over the pools at first light and the surrounding hills are bare vines and wet clay. Around the springs the building material changes with the geology, tufo in the south toward Lazio, gray pietra serena further north, brick and stucco in the spa resorts of the plain. Dinner afterwards tends to be pici, wild boar cooked long, pecorino from the same hills, and a bottle of something local drunk in a dining room with the heating on too high.
The name most people know is Saturnia, where the Cascate del Mulino spill down open-air terraces into free pools. It is beautiful and it is busy, particularly at weekends, when the car park fills by mid-morning and the terraces are shoulder to shoulder. Most visitors go for the afternoon, take the photograph, and drive back to Siena or Florence for the night, which means the thing they came for is at its most crowded during exactly the hours they are there.
The same aquifers keep going. Water surfaces well beyond the famous waterfall, in towns where the springs are attached to a hotel rather than a lay-by, and where staying the night is the point: pools open early, open late, and mostly empty. These are the Tuscan thermal towns where you can book a room, eat properly, and be in the water before anyone has driven down from the city.
Of the 84 communes we have mapped in Toscana, 7 qualify as hot spring towns worth staying overnight: each has natural thermal water, and each has a hotel a travel guide has vouched for. The smallest, San Casciano dei Bagni, has 1,500 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best hidden hot spring towns that eat well in Tuscany and The best hot spring towns with a serious restaurant 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.
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 Montaione
Montaione sits at 341 meters on a ridge above the Valdelsa, in the wooded hills west of Florence on the road toward Volterra. Etruscan and Roman finds at Poggio all'Aglione, Bellafonte and Iano confirm continuous occupation across the territory, material now held in the town's archaeological museum.
The medieval castello was the seat of an autonomous comune from 1256 and passed to Florence in 1369. From the early fourteenth century, glassmaking ran in the surrounding woods, and an eighteenth-century decree by the Grand Duke required master glassmakers to teach the craft to their fellow citizens.
The town joined Borghi più belli in 2007. The territory spreads well beyond the ridge itself.
Five kilometers west, a Franciscan convent founded in 1500 stands in the woods, its chapels laid out as a walkable replica of Jerusalem's holy sites. Ten kilometers south, Castelfalfi carries a separate, older Lombard origin, now a resort with its own vineyards and church.
Between them, the centro storico keeps the civic core: the tower, the palace, the parish church rebuilt on twelfth-century foundations. The comune, in effect, holds three distinct centuries of settlement at once: an ancient scatter of finds, a fourteenth-century craft economy, and a devotional complex from the 1500s, spread across ridge, castle and wood rather than gathered in one place.
What to see in Montaione
- Sacro Monte di San Vivaldo. Complex five kilometers west of the borgo. Seventeen chapels stand among oak woods, each holding a scene built as part of the topographical replica, still reached on foot along the paths between them.
- Castelfalfi. Lombard-origin castle and frazione ten kilometers south, restored as a private resort with vineyards and a Romanesque church of San Floriano.
- Centro storico. Medieval grid on the ridge, with the Palazzo Pretorio, the Torre del Cassero and the Chiesa di San Regolo restored after 1118 foundations.
How to get to Montaione
Firenze is about 1 h 7 min away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Montaione shows best, the Valdelsa light low on the wooded ridges and the San Vivaldo chapels in their full October ochre. The Mostra del Tartufo Bianco runs the last weekend of October and the first of November. July and August push past thirty in the valley but the centro storico at 341 meters stays manageable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Montecatini-Terme
The spa town sits at 27 meters in the Valdinievole, forty kilometers west of Florence, at the foot of the hills that hold its older twin on the height above. That older settlement predates the town below it: the springs were exploited later, and the modern spa grew up on the flat ground beneath the hill village rather than around it.
The two remain connected by the red funicular, so a visitor moves between them in minutes rather than by road. Each of the four named waters treats a different complaint, drawn from the same eleven springs but separated by mineral content once they reach the surface.
The Thermal Park gathers the pavilions that were built to house this water cure, Liberty and neo-Renaissance architecture arranged as a single walled enclave rather than scattered through the town. In 2021 the UNESCO listing grouped the town with other spa towns built for the same purpose, Bath, Vichy, Baden-Baden and Karlovy Vary among them, recognition of a model of spa town that produced this particular layout: springs, park, pavilions, and a hill town kept deliberately apart from the cure below.
What to see in Montecatini-Terme
- Terme Tettuccio. The most famous of the thermal establishments, designed by Ugo Giovannozzi, with Liberty interiors built on the concept of the Roman baths.
- Parco Termale. Walled thermal park holding the major spa pavilions, laid out around the eleven springs that surface in the lower town.
- Funicolare di Montecatini. The two red cars carry passengers up the hill on rails laid in 1898, the ride lasting eight and a half minutes.
How to get to Montecatini-Terme
It has its own railway station. Prato is about 31 min away by road. The full route from Florence.
✷ We have written about Montecatini-Terme
“I grew up around water that smells. In Budapest, you do not think of this as a flaw. The thermal water comes up out of the ground carrying its minerals with it, iron and sulfur, and whatever else the limestone has been holding for ten thousand years, and it announces itself before you see it.”
Read our piece on Montecatini-Terme →Montecatini Terme | The Bath Without People
Our tip
The thermal park works as a year-round destination, but the seasons feel different. April through June and September through October are the comfortable months: pavilions open, hotels staffed, walking the park or the funicular pleasant. July and August are hot in the Valdinievole and busy with package tourism.
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.
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.
More from Anywhere Italy
- The best hidden hot spring towns that eat well in TuscanyTuscanyhot springseats wellhidden8 towns · smallest 1,500 residents
- The best hot spring towns with a serious restaurant in TuscanyTuscanyhot springsserious restaurant10 towns · smallest 1,500 residents
- The best wine towns worth staying overnight in TuscanyTuscanywineworth staying overnight8 towns · smallest 1,500 residents
- The best hot-spring towns within 90 minutes of FlorenceNear Florencehot springswithin 90 min7 towns · smallest 3,492 residents · closest 46 min away
- The best hot spring towns you can reach by train in TuscanyTuscanyhot springsby train8 towns · smallest 5,072 residents
- The best hot-spring towns within 75 minutes of PisaNear Pisahot springswithin 75 min6 towns · smallest 3,492 residents · closest 8 min away