Start from 26 curated places around Pisa, IT, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Osteria dei Cavalieri
A well-regarded osteria on Via San Frediano, steps from Piazza dei Cavalieri, serving Tuscan regional cooking at a level of care that exceeds the price point. The menu runs from ribollita and pappardelle with wild boar to bistecca and offal dishes. Stone walls, beamed ceilings, and a compact room that fills quickly. Gambero Rosso-listed.
Pizzeria Il Montino
Pisa's oldest pizzeria, in operation since the 19th century, best known for cecina — a thin chickpea flatbread baked in a round copper pan — served in a split focaccia with optional fillings. The format is fast and cheap: order at the counter, collect when called, eat standing or at one of the few tables. Students and locals treat it as a midday ritual. Castagnaccio (chestnut cake) is the seasonal dessert worth trying in autumn.
Trails & outdoors
Lungarni River Walk
A flat walk along both banks of the Arno through the historic center, connecting Campo dei Miracoli on the west to the older neighborhoods east toward San Matteo. The loop along Lungarno Mediceo on the north bank and Lungarno Gambacorti on the south covers about 3km and passes Palazzo Blu, Ponte di Mezzo, and the string of Renaissance palazzi that define the city's civic identity. This is the definitive local evening walk.
Monte Pisano — Eremo della Spelonca Loop
A half-day loop from San Giuliano Terme into the Monte Pisano hills, climbing through Mediterranean scrub and chestnut forest to the Eremo della Spelonca — a hermitage dating to around the year 1000 — with views over the Arno valley, the Leaning Tower, and the Tyrrhenian coast on clear days. Moderate gradient; the terrain is rocky in places. The hills form the natural border between the Pisa and Lucca provinces.
Things to do
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo
The Cathedral's museum in the Camposanto cloister complex, housing the original sculptures, bronzes, and treasury objects removed from the Campo dei Miracoli buildings for conservation. Giovanni Pisano's marble statues from the Cathedral facade, a Byzantine ivory Madonna, and Nicola Pisano's carved pulpit from the Baptistery are the centrepieces. Less crowded than the Tower itself, and the architectural context of the cloister setting adds to the experience.
Museo delle Sinopie
A small museum opposite the Baptistery displaying the sinopie — the large red-ochre preparatory drawings — that lay beneath the Camposanto frescoes and were uncovered when WWII bomb damage melted the roof. The drawings are arresting as standalone works, showing the compositional thinking of 14th-century masters before the final painted surface was applied. Best visited after the Camposanto so you can mentally overlay drawing and finished fresco.
Landmarks & sights
Campo dei Miracoli
The walled complex holding the Leaning Tower, Cathedral, Baptistery, and Camposanto on a sweep of green lawn in the northwest corner of the city. The tilt of the Tower is more dramatic in person than photographs suggest — it reads differently from different angles, so walk around it. Crowds peak between 10am and 4pm; the lawn itself is free to enter.
Piazza dei Cavalieri
The civic heart of medieval and Renaissance Pisa, dominated by the Palazzo della Carovana — its facade covered in sgraffiti decorations designed by Vasari — and the church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri. Since Napoleon installed the Scuola Normale Superiore here in 1810, it has functioned as an elite university campus, giving the square a lived-in daily energy rather than a purely tourist feel. The statue of Cosimo I de' Medici at its centre anchors one of the best-preserved Renaissance civic spaces in Tuscany.