Via Francigena
Via Francigena in Tuscany
19 towns
Tuscany has 19 Via Francigena communes in our index. They cluster in the Siena, Lucca, and Massa-Carrara provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Montalcino, San Casciano dei Bagni, and Castiglione d'Orcia. 16 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
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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.
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Castiglione d'Orcia
Province: Siena · 540 m
A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.
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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.
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San Quirico d'Orcia
Province: Siena · 409 m
A walled stop on the Via Francigena at 409 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, where a twelfth-century Collegiata, a Renaissance garden and the Bagno Vignoni thermal pool sit within fifteen kilometers of each other.
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Siena
Province: Siena · 322 m
The medieval rival of Florence at 322 meters on three hills, with a shell-shaped piazza where seventeen contrade race bareback horses twice a year.
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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.
Montignoso
Province: Massa-Carrara · 132 m
A Riviera Apuana commune split between the Cinquale coastal frazione, the Castello Aghinolfi on the hill, and the Lago di Porta wetland on the Versilia plain.
Piancastagnaio
Province: Siena · 772 m
A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope, where four contrade still race for the Palio delle Contrade each August.
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Radicofani
Province: Siena · 814 m
The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower: a 1,060-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.
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San Miniato
Province: Pisa · 150 m
The hilltop town between Pisa and Florence that produces a quarter of Tuscany's white truffles and once held the imperial seat of Otto I.
Buonconvento
Province: Siena · 147 m
The walled brick borgo in the Crete Senesi where Emperor Henry VII died in 1313, on the Via Cassia at the confluence of the Arbia and Ombrone.
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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.
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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.
Cerreto Guidi
Province: Firenze · 123 m
The Medici hunting villa above the Padule di Fucecchio, where Cosimo I sent his court for the marshland game and Buontalenti built four ramps of stairs.
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.
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Pietrasanta
Province: Lucca · 14 m
The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, worked by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.
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.
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Lucca
Province: Lucca · 19 m
The provincial capital ringed by four kilometers of intact sixteenth-century walls, birthplace of Puccini and the only fully walled Italian city of its scale.
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.