Complete guide to Tuscany in 2026: Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, the Val d'Orcia, Chianti, the Saturnia thermal baths, the coast, and the hidden villages. Tuscany
Tuscany is the best-known Italian region in the world, and for good reasons. But it is also the most stereotyped region: mass tourism concentrates on a 150 km triangle (Florence-Siena-San Gimignano) leaving the Maremma, the Casentino, the Lunigiana, the Garfagnana unexplored, areas just as beautiful, far less crowded, often at half the price. This guide takes you into the whole of Tuscany.
| Area | Character | Main attractions | Type of tourist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florence and surroundings | Urban art, world-class museums | Uffizi, David, Duomo, Fiesole | Everyone |
| Chianti and the Siena area | Wine, hills, medieval villages | Siena, Monteriggioni, Greve | Food and wine, couples |
| Val d'Orcia | Iconic UNESCO landscape | Pienza, Montalcino, Bagno Vignoni | Photographers, couples, adults |
| Costa degli Etruschi | Sea plus Etruscan history | Bolgheri (wine), Populonia, Elba | Sea plus culture |
| Maremma | Wild, Italian cowboys, thermal baths | Pitigliano, Sovana, Terme Saturnia | Adventurers, authenticity |
| Lunigiana plus Garfagnana | Apuan Alps, Apennines, villages | Carrara marble, Castelnuovo | Trekking, less tourism |
| Versilia coast | Sea plus high society | Forte dei Marmi, Viareggio | Summer, beach holiday |
The Uffizi without an online booking: impossible in high season (April to October), queues of 2 to 4 hours. Book on www.uffizi.it 2 to 3 weeks ahead (€3 surcharge). The Galleria dell'Accademia (Michelangelo's David): the same situation, always book it online. The Duomo of Florence: entry to the Cathedral is free but limited to 5 minutes per visitor in peak hours, to climb Brunelleschi's dome and for the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo buy the combined "Opera del Duomo" ticket (€20, includes dome plus bell tower plus baptistery plus museum). Eat lunch on Via dei Servi or Via dei Macci (Oltrarno) instead of Via dei Calzaiuoli, same food, prices 40% lower, zero tourists.
Tuscany: tours & tickets
Compare guided tours, skip-the-line tickets and day trips for Tuscany.
See availability & prices →We may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.Siena is different from Florence in every way, it is not an art city in the Renaissance sense of Florence (which dominated the Renaissance) but a medieval Gothic city that the Renaissance overtook and that crystallized at its most beautiful moment. The Piazza del Campo (the most beautiful medieval square in Europe) is not a film set but the center of Sienese civic life, the Sienese walk through it every day, eat gelato there, watch the sky there. The Duomo of Siena (the Gothic facade in white-black-green marble, the mosaic floor with 56 scenes from the Old Testament carved in the marble between 1372 and 1547, fully visible only in August to October) is for many critics the most beautiful duomo in Italy, superior even to Florence's for its stylistic coherence.
The Terme di Saturnia (GR, coordinates: 42.645°N 11.519°E, search "Cascate del Mulino" on Google Maps) are the most beautiful natural thermal baths in Italy, cascades of thermal water at 37.5°C that fall over white travertine terraces in the open Maremma countryside. Access is completely free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Almost no international guide mentions them. The site is reachable only by car (GPS: Via Follonata, Saturnia GR), 15 km from the village of Saturnia, from which you arrive on foot in 25 minutes along the Val di Stellata. Bring only a swimsuit and a towel, the water does the rest.
Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo, all reachable by train on the main railway. The Val d'Orcia, the inner Chianti (Panzano, Castellina in Chianti), the Maremma (Pitigliano, Saturnia), the Lunigiana, practically impossible without a car. The hybrid solution works very well: use the train for Florence and Siena (a perfect base), rent a car for 3 to 4 specific days for Chianti and the Val d'Orcia, return it in Siena or Florence. DiscoverCars and Hertz have offices in both cities.
July and August in the Tuscan cities are at the limit of bearable for the temperatures (35 to 38°C in the Val d'Orcia, 33 to 36°C in Florence) and for the crowds. April to June and September to October are the ideal periods. November to March: Florence is beautiful empty (but many agriturismi and rural properties close), hotel prices drop 40 to 50%, the museums can be visited without queues. January in Florence: an average temperature of 6 to 8°C, almost no foreign tourists, the Florentines stay in the city, it is the moment when Florence resembles how Stendhal saw it in 1817.
The ZTLs are the number-one source of nasty surprises for tourists with a rental car, cameras that read the plates and automatically send the fine to the rental agency, which passes it to your credit card months after the trip. The main ZTLs to absolutely avoid: Florence (the whole historic center, almost always active, never drive into the center of Florence); Rome (a ZTL with variable hours, some 24/7 in the historic center); Siena (the whole center inside the walls); Bologna (Zona T-Days). The map of every Italian ZTL is available on Google Maps by searching "ZTL plus city name," the Waze app flags the ZTLs in real time. Prevention is worth infinitely more than disputing: a ZTL fine is almost impossible to dispute for a foreign tourist and arrives 2 to 3 months late on the credit card when you have already forgotten the trip.
The Acqua Alta (the phenomenon of the lagoon water level rising and flooding the lowest Venetian streets) happens mainly in November to January, with peaks in October and February. The critical level: above 110 cm MSLM the problems start in Piazza San Marco (the lowest in Venice); above 130 cm a significant part of the historic center is flooded. The Venice Tide Center (www.comune.venezia.it/maree) publishes accurate forecasts 3 to 4 days ahead, the "Venezia Unica" app sends alert notifications. What to do during the Acqua Alta: the City installs the "passerelle" (raised wooden walkways along the whole main tourist route Station-Rialto-San Marco) that Venetians walk normally; buy or rent rubber boots (sold at the newsstands and the shops of the center for €5 to €10) or waterproof your shoes with plastic bags. The Acqua Alta is not an emergency, it is part of Venetian life, and seeing Piazza San Marco with 20 cm of reflected water is a spectacle no "normal" day offers.
Transport strikes in Italy are common (on average 4 to 6 rail strikes a year) but regulated by Law 146/1990, the essential services (regional trains in the peak hours 6:00 to 9:00 and 18:00 to 21:00, Frecciarossa and Frecciargento for the international routes) must be guaranteed even during the strike. How to find out: Trenitalia publishes the list of guaranteed trains on www.trenitalia.com at least 5 days before the announced strike; the "Trenitalia" app sends notifications for your already-bought tickets. Your rights during the strike: a full refund of the ticket if the train is canceled (even non-refundable tickets) or the chance to reschedule the trip at no extra cost. In practice: Italian rail strikes rarely last more than 24 hours and almost never involve High Speed in the early morning hours, the Frecciarossa trains of 6:00 to 9:00 almost always depart even during a strike.
The strategies that work: (1) Look in the towns 20 to 40 km from the main destination, Fiesole for Florence, Tivoli for Rome, Mestre for Venice, Sorrento for Amalfi; (2) Contact the hotels directly by email, some keep rooms for direct bookings not visible on Booking.com; (3) Agriturismo.it has properties the big OTAs ignore, at Ferragosto it is often the only option available at reasonable prices in rural areas; (4) Airbnb often shows the availability of private homes when the hotels are full; (5) Family-run B&Bs (1 to 5 rooms) have more variable availability than the chains, look for them directly on Google Maps filtering for "B&B plus city name" with the most recent reviews.
The signs of a low-quality tourist restaurant: a menu with photos of the dishes (almost no quality Italian restaurant uses photos, the menus are written, full stop); staff outside the door who "invite" passersby in (never a good sign in Italy); a menu in 8 languages with the same identical offerings; "pizza and pasta and tiramisù" as the only dishes of a cuisine that should be regional; a location on a main tourist square (Piazza Navona in Rome, Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, the cost of the rent pushes prices up 40 to 60% compared with the neighborhood trattorias). The signs of an authentic restaurant: a menu handwritten or on a blackboard (it changes with the season); a mostly Italian clientele; house wine loose in a carafe (almost always good and at €3 to €4); a starter not asked for but brought automatically with the bread (in the trattorias of the South); the waiter who asks you "where are you from?" with genuine curiosity, not as a profession.
Italian neighborhood markets run Monday to Saturday morning (7:00 to 13:00 in most cities), Wednesday and Saturday are the days with the most stalls in the medium-to-large cities. The etiquette of the Italian market: you do not touch the fruit without asking the vendor ("posso?"), the vendor chooses the product for you and this is normal, not a scam; you rarely haggle in Italian markets (it is more a southern tradition than a Piedmontese or Lombard one); the prices at Italian neighborhood markets are always lower than the supermarket for fruit and vegetables and comparable or higher for meat and fish. The most authentic markets by region: the Porta Palazzo market in Turin (the largest in Europe by surface); the Sant'Ambrogio market in Florence (the Florentines' favorite, near Santa Croce); the Ballarò market in Palermo (the most picturesque in Italy).
The Italian health system is public and universal, in an emergency anyone is treated regardless of nationality and insurance coverage. The Emergency Room (Pronto Soccorso, PS): in any Italian hospital for emergencies, the single emergency number is 118 (ambulance) and 112 (all emergencies). The triage: red code (life-threatening) is treated immediately; yellow code (urgent) within 30 minutes; green code (non-urgent) may wait 2 to 6 hours. For non-emergencies: the Guardia Medica (116117) is the out-of-hours and holiday care service, a doctor answers for free and can make a house call to your hotel. The night on-call pharmacy: every city has pharmacies that open at night on a rotation, the list is posted on the door of every closed pharmacy or search "farmacia di turno plus city name" on Google Maps.