Instead of Lucca
Instead of Lucca: hill towns within 90 minutes
Lucca is a walled city you can cycle around the top of, and the wall is the reason it fills up: it is the single best-known thing to do in an afternoon between Pisa and Florence.
The Garfagnana above it and the hills toward Pistoia hold towns with the same Romanesque churches and none of the bicycle rental.
Hill towns in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Lucca by road, ranked by outside recognition. Lucca itself and the other famous places are left out. 10 towns match, and all of them are below.
Instead of Lucca
Lucca · 88,798 residents · Toscana
- BargaLucca
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lucca
- 47m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 9,415
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- Casale MarittimoPisa
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lucca
- 1h 8m by car
- Residents
- 1,051
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- Varese LigureLa Spezia
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lucca
- 1h 29m by car
- Residents
- 1,791
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- MontaioneFirenze
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lucca
- 1h 10m by car
- Residents
- 3,492
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- FosdinovoMassa-Carrara
Hill town · Bandiera Arancione
- From Lucca
- 1h 7m by car
- Residents
- 4,574
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
The 5 best-recognised of the 10 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Lucca. More of them follow below.
- ✷ We've been
Barga
Province: Lucca · 410 m
A medieval hilltop town at 410 meters in the Serchio valley, where Giovanni Pascoli wrote his last poems and the August festival serves fish and chips.
Casale Marittimo
Province: Pisa · 214 m
A concentric stone borgo at 214 meters above the Val di Cecina, built where a seventh-century BC Etruscan outpost of Volterra once stood.
Varese Ligure
Province: La Spezia · 358 m
The Val di Vara's medieval seat at 358 meters, the first European municipality with ISO 14001 certification, anchor of Italy's largest organic district.
Montaione
Province: Firenze · 341 m
A medieval glassmaking and truffle borgo at 341 meters above the Valdelsa, with a Franciscan replica of Jerusalem in the woods nearby.
- ✷ We've been
Fosdinovo
Province: Massa-Carrara · 500 m
The southern Lunigiana stronghold at 500 meters, the Malaspina castle where Dante took shelter in 1306 and later set a Purgatorio canto.
Barberino di Mugello
Province: Firenze · 272 m
The Mugello gateway at 272 meters where the Medici family kept its first country villas, with Michelozzo's Cafaggiolo and the artificial Lago di Bilancino below.
Stazzema
Province: Lucca · 440 m
A mountain commune of seventeen hamlets in the Apuan Alps, site of the August 1944 Sant'Anna massacre and Italy's National Park of Peace.
Licciana Nardi
Province: Massa-Carrara · 215 m
A Lunigiana Malaspina village at 215 meters in the Apennine Tosco-Emiliano park, named in 1933 for the Risorgimento patriot Anacarsi Nardi.
Fiesole
Province: Firenze · 295 m
An Etruscan hilltop above Florence, still looking down on what later replaced it.
Pontremoli
Province: Massa-Carrara · 236 m
The capital of Lunigiana at the confluence of the Magra and Verde, holding the prehistoric stele statues and the oldest book prize in Italy.
Drive times measured by road from Lucca. A town with no time shown is one the router could not reach, usually because it is served by ferry. How this data is built.