Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Tuscany
13 towns
Tuscany holds 13 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Livorno, Lucca, and Grosseto provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Grosseto, Livorno, and Piombino. 10 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
- ✷ We've been
Grosseto
Province: Grosseto · 10 m
The Maremma capital on the Ombrone river, ringed by hexagonal Medici walls of 1564 that now serve as the city's public park.
- ✷ We've been
Livorno
Province: Livorno · 3 m
Tuscany's working port and Medici-planned 'New City', a 16th-century planned town built on reclaimed coast, with a Venice-like canal quarter, the Quattro Mori monument, and a 1.5-km seafront promenade that locals call the world's most beautiful balcony.
- ✷ 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.
- ✷ We've been
Castagneto Carducci
Province: Livorno · 194 m
A hilltop borgo at 194 meters above the Costa degli Etruschi, renamed for the poet Carducci in 1907 and the home of Bolgheri and Sassicaia.
- ✷ We've been
Castiglione della Pescaia
Province: Grosseto · 4 m
A Maremma seaside town under an Aragonese castle, with the Vetulonia necropolis behind it and Italo Calvino buried on the hill.
- ✷ We've been
Orbetello
Province: Grosseto · 3 m
A town on a narrow isthmus at the center of its own lagoon, fortified by Spain in 1557.
- ✷ We've been
Pisa
Province: Pisa · 4 m
Maritime republic on the Arno, twelve kilometers from the Ligurian Sea, with the leaning bell tower at the center of a single UNESCO-listed walled compound.
- ✷ We've been
Viareggio
Province: Lucca · 2 m
The Versilia capital, a Carnival city on the Tuscan coast that turned into a Belle Époque resort when the railway arrived.
Bibbona
Province: Livorno · 85 m
An Etruscan-origin hill village above the Costa degli Etruschi, with a Romanesque parish church and a Lorraine-built coastal fort eight kilometers down the road at Marina di Bibbona.
- ✷ We've been
Camaiore
Province: Lucca · 34 m
The Versilia commune that runs from the mountains to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.
- ✷ We've been
Carrara
Province: Massa-Carrara · 80 m
The marble town at the foot of the Apuan Alps, with over 650 quarry sites in the valleys above and the stone that built the Pantheon, the Pietà and Michelangelo's David.
- ✷ We've been
Pietrasanta
Province: Lucca · 14 m
The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, worked by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.
- ✷ We've been
Forte dei Marmi
Province: Lucca · 2 m
The Versilia luxury beach built around an eighteenth-century marble-loading fort, with 99 bagni concessions and a Wednesday market that draws Milan.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Capestrano
Province: L'Aquila
A hilltop village at 465 meters above the Tirino valley, where in 1934 a farmer turned up the 6th-century BC limestone Warrior of Capestrano.
Morcone
Province: Benevento
A Sannite hill town at 600 meters above the Tammaro valley, with 5th-century BC walls and the convent where a future saint took his vows.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley
The Castello di Fénis, with its double ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard, sits at the centre of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Vinci
Province: Firenze
The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo
An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.