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The 10 smallest comuni in Tuscany

Tuscany's smallest comuni in the catalogue, by official ISTAT population. 10 towns shown.

Tuscany's fame concentrates in a dozen names, which leaves its smallest comuni to get on with their lives. These are the emptiest in our Tuscan catalogue, by official resident count.

An island, a handful of Apennine villages, some Maremma hill towns. None of them needs you, which is the best possible condition for a visit.

  1. 1.Capraia Isola370 residentsLivorno · TuscanyA volcanic island of 370 residents and one village, the third largest of the Tuscan Archipelago, a penal colony from 1873 to 1986 and a national park since.
  2. 2.Casale Marittimo1,051 residentsPisa · TuscanyA concentric stone borgo at 214 meters above the Val di Cecina, built where a seventh-century BC Etruscan outpost of Volterra once stood.
  3. 3.RadicofaniRadicofani1,060 residentsSiena · TuscanyThe Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower — a 1,060-resident UNESCO-inscribed borgo at 814m on a volcanic basalt outcrop visible across half of southern Tuscany, with the spectacular Rocca di Radicofani (Ghino di Tacco's outlaw fortress, mentioned by Dante in Purgatorio + Boccaccio in the Decameron), the 16th-c Posta Medicea on the Via Francigena, and Bandiera Arancione + UNESCO + Via Francigena triple signal.
  4. 4.Trequanda1,166 residentsSiena · TuscanyA village of 1,166 in three hilltop borghi between Crete Senesi and Val di Chiana, with the terracotta workshops of Petroio holding to a five-hundred-year craft.
  5. 5.Isola del Giglio1,330 residentsGrosseto · TuscanyA granite island in the Tyrrhenian Archipelago, walled village on the ridge, port below, where the Costa Concordia ran aground in January 2012.

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  1. 6.San Casciano dei Bagni1,500 residentsSiena · TuscanyA hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.
  2. 7.Castiglione di GarfagnanaCastiglione di Garfagnana1,705 residentsLucca · TuscanyA walled medieval town at 540 meters in the Garfagnana, the Lucca outpost that refused to submit to the Este and held the pass to San Pellegrino.
  3. 8.Chiusdino1,751 residentsSiena · TuscanyA medieval village at 564 meters in the Val di Merse where Galgano Guidotti plunged his sword into a rock in 1180 and the roofless Cistercian abbey grew up below.
  4. 9.Abetone CutiglianoAbetone Cutigliano1,825 residentsPistoia · TuscanyThe Apennine ski pass at 1,388 meters where the Granduca's two stone pyramids of 1778 mark the old Tuscan-Modenese border.
  5. 10.PienzaPienza1,976 residentsSiena · TuscanyThe first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 by Bernardo Rossellino for Pope Pius II on the Val d'Orcia ridge.

We write about towns like these every Sunday, one town a week, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Pietrasanta.

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