Anywhere Italy

Drive time

The towns between Pisa airport and anywhere better

Comuni whose nearest city is Pisa, within 45 minutes of the airport, for the hours between a landing and a plan. The catalogue holds 9, all shown.

Pisa airport unloads its passengers toward the tower, and the tower sends them home. In between, mostly unvisited, sit the towns whose nearest city is Pisa itself, none more than forty five minutes out.

The catalogue holds a handful of them, all shown here. If your flight lands at an awkward hour, any one of them beats an airport hotel and most of them beat the queue at the tower.

  1. 1.San Giuliano TermeSan Giuliano Terme8 min from PisaPisa · TuscanyA thermal spa at the foot of Monte Pisano, ten kilometers from Pisa, where the springs were bathed since the Romans called them Aquae Pisanae.
  2. 2.PisaPisa16 min from PisaPisa · TuscanyMaritime 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.
  3. 3.PontederaPontedera25 min from PisaPisa · TuscanyThe Valdera's working capital on the Pisa–Florence line, where Piaggio turned a bombed aircraft plant into the birthplace of the Vespa in 1946.
  4. 4.ViareggioViareggio29 min from PisaLucca · TuscanyThe Versilia capital, a Liberty-architecture seafront built around the 1873 Carnival and the 254-kilogram papier-mâché floats that still parade every February.
  5. 5.Vicopisano33 min from PisaPisa · TuscanyA medieval river port on the southern slope of Monte Pisano, rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1434 after Florence took the town from Pisa.

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  1. 6.LuccaLucca34 min from PisaLucca · TuscanyThe provincial capital ringed by four kilometers of intact sixteenth-century walls, birthplace of Puccini and the only fully walled Italian city of its scale.
  2. 7.Forte dei MarmiForte dei Marmi38 min from PisaLucca · TuscanyThe Versilia luxury beach built around an eighteenth-century marble-loading fort, with 99 bagni concessions and a Wednesday market that draws Milan.
  3. 8.PietrasantaPietrasanta41 min from PisaLucca · TuscanyThe marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, founded in 1255 and worked since by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.
  4. 9.CamaioreCamaiore44 min from PisaLucca · TuscanyThe Versilia commune that runs from the Apuan Alps to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.

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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One letter on Sundays. The week’s town, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.

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