🌿Riserva Naturale in Tuscany

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.

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.

Capalbio

Province: Grosseto · 217 m

A walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne and home of Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Castellina in Chianti

Province: Siena · 578 m

• 🍷Chianti Classico DOCG

A Chianti hill town at 578 meters on the watershed between the Arno and the Ombrone, with an Etruscan tumulus, a Brunelleschi-reinforced wall and a covered medieval walkway around its edge.

Castiglione della Pescaia

Province: Grosseto · 4 m

A Maremma seaside town under an Aragonese castle, with the Vetulonia necropolis behind it, the Diaccia Botrona wetland beside it, and Italo Calvino buried on the hill.

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.

Orbetello

Province: Grosseto · 3 m

A town on a narrow isthmus at the center of its own lagoon, fortified by Spain in 1557 and tied to Monte Argentario by two tombolos.

Pienza

Province: Siena · 491 m

The first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 by Bernardo Rossellino for Pope Pius II on the Val d'Orcia ridge.

Chiusdino

Province: Siena · 564 m

A 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.

Piancastagnaio

Province: Siena · 772 m

A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope of Monte Amiata, where four contrade still race for the Palio delle Contrade each August.

Poppi

Province: Arezzo · 437 m

The Casentino borgo at 437 meters whose castle sat above the field where Dante fought the Battle of Campaldino in June 1289.

Arezzo

Province: Arezzo · 296 m

Tuscany's other set-piece — a 96,000-resident Etruscan-Roman-medieval hilltop city 80 km southeast of Florence, with Piero della Francesca's Leggenda della Vera Croce fresco cycle in San Francesco (1452–66), the sloped Piazza Grande set used by Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful, and the Fiera Antiquaria — Italy's largest monthly antique fair, running since 1968.