Bandiera Arancione
Bandiera Arancione in Tuscany
31 towns
Tuscany carries 31 of the Bandiera Arancione towns we cover. Most cluster in the Siena, Pisa, and Grosseto provinces.
The three most recognized in our catalogue are Massa Marittima, Montalcino, and San Casciano dei Bagni. 28 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
Massa Marittima
Province: Grosseto · 380 m
A medieval mining town at 380 meters, free commune from 1225 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.
- Written about. No. 42.
Montalcino
Province: Siena · 564 m
A walled hill town at 564 meters above the Val d'Orcia, the last fortress to hold out for the Sienese Republic and the birthplace of Brunello.
San Casciano dei Bagni
Province: Siena · 582 m
A hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.
- Written about. No. 50.
Manciano
Province: Grosseto · 444 m
A market town at 444 meters in the southern Maremma, with a Sienese fortress of 1424 and the thermal frazione of Saturnia in its territory.
- Written about. No. 40.
Suvereto
Province: Livorno · 127 m
A stone borgo at 127 meters above the Val di Cornia, named for the cork oaks of its forests and first recorded in 973, under a twelfth-century Aldobrandeschi fortress.
- Written about. No. 31.
Castelnuovo Berardenga
Province: Siena · 351 m
A commune of 351 meters, the last castle Siena built against Florence, in 1366.
- Written about. No. 43.
Montepulciano
Province: Siena · 605 m
A Renaissance hill town at 605 meters on a limestone ridge, aging its Sangiovese-based red in vaulted cellars beneath the palazzi.
- Written about. No. 29.
San Gimignano
Province: Siena · 334 m
A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.
- Written about. No. 11.
Abetone Cutigliano
Province: Pistoia · 1,388 m
The Apennine ski pass at 1,388 meters where the Granduca's two stone pyramids of 1778 mark the old Tuscan-Modenese border.
Anghiari
Province: Arezzo · 430 m
A walled medieval town at 430 meters over the upper Tiber valley, where Florence beat Milan in 1440 and Leonardo started the fresco he never finished.
Cetona
Province: Siena · 384 m
A medieval borgo at 384 meters, sold by Cosimo I to the Vitelli in 1556 and the centro storico still shaped by their fortress reconstruction.
Lucignano
Province: Arezzo · 400 m
A walled elliptical hill town at 400 meters between Siena and Arezzo, planned in medieval concentric rings around the goldsmith's reliquary called the Tree of Life.
Murlo
Province: Siena · 314 m
A medieval bishops' fief twenty kilometers south of Siena, with an Etruscan princely palace on Poggio Civitate and the Cappellone statue as its symbol.
- Written about. No. 69.
Peccioli
Province: Pisa · 144 m
Borgo dei Borghi 2024 in the Valdera hills, a medieval village that funded a public contemporary-art program with revenue from its landfill plant.
- Written about. No. 44.
Pienza
Province: Siena · 491 m
The first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 on the Val d'Orcia ridge.
Pitigliano
Province: Grosseto · 313 m
The Little Jerusalem of southern Tuscany, carved into a tuff spur in the Maremma, where the houses, the synagogue and the streets are all cut from the same volcanic rock.
- Written about. No. 1.
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.
Castiglion Fiorentino
Province: Arezzo · 342 m
A walled hill town at 342 meters between Arezzo and Cortona, where Etruscan walls support the medieval Cassero.
Chiusi
Province: Siena · 398 m
The Etruscan city of King Porsenna at 398 meters above the Val di Chiana, with one of Italy's major Etruscan museums and tunnels carved beneath the streets.
- Written about. No. 33.
Monteriggioni
Province: Siena · 274 m
A circular Sienese fortress built between 1213 and 1219 on a natural hill, fourteen towers on a 570-meter wall, intact and unbroken.
- Written about. No. 45.
Radicofani
Province: Siena · 814 m
The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower: a 1,044-resident UNESCO-inscribed borgo at 814m on a volcanic outcrop visible across half of southern Tuscany, crowned by an outlaw's fortress that Dante and Boccaccio both wrote into their pages.
Vinci
Province: Firenze · 97 m
The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.
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.
Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina
Province: Pisa · 576 m
A copper and geothermal borgo at 576 meters in the Cecina valley, where natural steam vents and medieval towers sit on the same hill.
Certaldo
Province: Firenze · 67 m
The brick-built upper town in the Valdelsa where Boccaccio spent his last years, twenty-five kilometers from Florence on the medieval road to Siena.
Montecarlo
Province: Lucca · 163 m
A walled hill village at 163 meters above the Lucca plain, founded by Emperor Charles IV in 1333 and named for him, surrounded by twenty wineries.
Santa Fiora
Province: Grosseto · 687 m
An Aldobrandeschi and Sforza mountain borgo on Monte Amiata at 687 meters, holding one of the world's largest collections of Della Robbia terracotta.
Trequanda
Province: Siena · 453 m
A village of 1,137 in three hilltop borghi between Crete Senesi and Val di Chiana, with the terracotta workshops of Petroio holding to a five-hundred-year craft.
Vicopisano
Province: Pisa · 12 m
A medieval river port rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1434 after Florence took the town from Pisa.
- Written about. No. 34.
Volterra
Province: Pisa · 531 m
The Etruscan acropolis of Velathri at 531 meters, the alabaster town that has been carving the same stone for three thousand years.
- Written about. No. 8.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its castle set on the highest coastal hill above a convent that has kept a saint's relics for three centuries.
Govone
Province: Cuneo
A Roero hill village above the Tanaro, between Alba and Asti, built around a Savoy summer residence turned town hall.
Nicosia
Province: Enna
A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centers, where the dialect of its Lombard settlers is still spoken.
Corfinio
Province: L'Aquila
A village of under a thousand on the Peligna valley floor at 346 meters, sitting on the Italic League's would-be capital Italia.