Instead of Pisa
Instead of Pisa: hill towns and coastal towns within 90 minutes
Most people see Pisa for ninety minutes, photograph one tower, and leave from the airport they arrived at. The city deserves better and rarely gets it.
Within an hour of that airport are hill towns, a coast, and the Monte Pisano, none of which have a queue for a leaning anything.
Hill towns and coastal towns in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Pisa by road, ranked by outside recognition. Pisa itself and the other famous places are left out. 32 towns match; the 12 best-recognised are below.
Instead of Pisa
Pisa · 88,737 residents · Toscana
- BargaLucca
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Pisa
- 1h 17m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 9,415
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- PiombinoLivorno
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Pisa
- 1h 20m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 32,194
- When to go
- May–Sep
- Casale MarittimoPisa
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Pisa
- 52m by car
- Residents
- 1,051
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- LericiLa Spezia
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Pisa
- 59m by car
- Residents
- 9,425
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- Varese LigureLa Spezia
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Pisa
- 1h 30m by car
- Residents
- 1,791
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
The 5 best-recognised of the 32 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Pisa. 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.
- ✷ We've been
Piombino
Province: Livorno · 21 m
A promontory port facing Elba across the channel, founded by refugees from Etruscan Populonia and now the Tuscan archipelago's ferry capital.
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.
- ✷ We've been
Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
A fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
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.
- ✷ We've been
Campiglia Marittima
Province: Livorno · 231 m
A walled hilltop borgo above the Val di Cornia, where the Rocca tower watches a mining landscape worked from the Etruscans to 1976.
- ✷ We've been
Monterosso al Mare
Province: La Spezia · 12 m
The westernmost and largest of the five villages, where Eugenio Montale spent the childhood summers that became Ossi di seppia in 1925.
Framura
Province: La Spezia · 76 m
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
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
Ameglia
Province: La Spezia · 89 m
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
- ✷ We've been
Portovenere
Province: La Spezia · 37 m
A Genoese fortress guards the western mouth of the Gulf of Poets, above the rock where a Roman temple to Venus once stood.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia · 5 m
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Drive times measured by road from Pisa. 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.