👣Via Francigena in Tuscany

Montalcino

Province: Siena · 564 m

• 🍷Brunello di Montalcino DOCG

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.

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.

Castiglione d'Orcia

Province: Siena · 540 m

A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, first recorded in 714, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.

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.

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.

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.

Radicofani

Province: Siena · 814 m

The 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.

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.

Camaiore

Province: Lucca · 34 m

The 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.

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.

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 of Monte Amiata, where four contrade still race for the Palio delle Contrade each August.

Pietrasanta

Province: Lucca · 14 m

The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, founded in 1255 and worked since 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.

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.