Where to stay in Pisa: the best areas and hotels

The Field of Miracles is one of those sights that survives its own fame. A vast green lawn, a cathedral and a baptistery in dazzling white marble, and beside them the tower, leaning further than you expect. By mid-morning it is thick with tour groups. At seven, or after dark when the marble is floodlit, it is another place entirely.

That is the argument for staying here. The streets just south and east of the piazza hold the city’s best-placed hotels: a traditional four-star a short walk from the cathedral, townhouse guesthouses, and simple, friendly bed and breakfasts with rooms decorated by local artists. Restaurants right by the tower are touristy; walk five minutes towards the centre to eat well.

Between the tower and the river lies the Pisa that visitors tend to miss. Piazza dei Cavalieri, with its extravagantly decorated palace, is the heart of the university; narrow arcaded streets run down to the Arno, where pastel palazzi curve along the embankments and the Ponte di Mezzo marks the centre of town.

Stay here for evenings rather than monuments: aperitivo in the piazzas, market stalls, and restaurants priced for students rather than coach parties. Places to stay include a refined guest house in a historic palazzo near Piazza dei Cavalieri and an early twentieth-century villa with a garden and pool, a rare treat this close to the middle. The tower is around ten minutes on foot.

Pisa Centrale sits at the southern edge of the centre, and the streets around it are where the sensible money stays. Florence is about an hour away by train, Lucca less, and the airport is roughly ten minutes by direct bus, so it suits anyone landing late, leaving early or using Pisa as a springboard.

Hotels here are larger and more businesslike than those by the tower: a well-known four-star directly opposite the station, older three-stars a hundred metres from the platforms, and good rates all round. It is not the prettiest corner of town, but Corso Italia, the main shopping street, leads straight from the station to the river, and the tower is a pleasant 20-minute walk.

If you are touring Tuscany by car, the historic centre, with its restricted traffic zone and scarce parking, is more trouble than it is worth. The alternative is one of the modern hotels on the fringes of the city, where parking is easy and the rooms are bigger.

The pick sits beside the San Rossore nature reserve, with a garden and a pool for cooling off after a hot day of sightseeing, and the Piazza dei Miracoli about 15 minutes away on foot. Others cluster near the congress centre and the hospital district to the east, within walking distance or a short drive of the old town. You give up some charm. You gain a parking space, which in Italy is not nothing.

Few visitors realise Pisa has a beach. A short drive west of the city, the resorts of Marina di Pisa, Tirrenia and Calambrone line the Tyrrhenian shore: long stretches of fine sand, neat rows of parasols and a thick belt of umbrella pines behind.

Tirrenia is where the best hotels are. Expect seafront resorts with private beach areas, outdoor pools, gardens, mini clubs and playgrounds, the kind of place where Italian families settle in for a fortnight. Pisa’s airport is only minutes away by car, and the tower makes an easy half-day trip. Come between June and September; out of season the coast goes very quiet indeed.

San Giuliano Terme has been in the business of relaxation for centuries. Its hot springs drew the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, who built a summer palace here in the eighteenth century; today it is a five-star spa hotel, complete with frescoed ceilings and thermal pools. For a romantic weekend, nothing near Pisa comes close.

Around the town, olive-covered hills hide villas and small country hotels with pools, and a hilltop residence of apartments set in vast gardens. The Leaning Tower is within a 15-minute drive and Lucca is not much further, so you can sightsee by day and be back in the water by dusk. You will want a car.

Volterra stands high on a ridge in the south of the province, an hour or so from Pisa and a world away. The Etruscans built it; the Romans left a theatre; the Middle Ages added stern stone palaces and a magnificent main square. Its craftsmen have been carving alabaster for well over two thousand years, and still are.

This is a place to slow down. Stay inside the walls, in a small hotel in the heart of the old town, or just outside in a villa with a garden, a pool and views across wave after wave of bare Tuscan hills. It suits walkers, drivers and anyone who finds San Gimignano too crowded. It does not suit a flying visit.

Livorno is Tuscany without the Renaissance filter: a working port with a network of canals, old fortresses, a loud covered market and some of the best seafood on this coast. Its showpiece is the Terrazza Mascagni, a vast chequerboard promenade on the seafront, made for the evening walk.

Most visitors are here for the ferries to Sardinia and Corsica, or off a cruise ship. For them a night in town is very convenient, and the city deserves more attention than it gets. There is a smart spa address a short drive from the port, alongside friendly three-stars in the historic district and near the railway station. Pisa is a quick train ride north.