PISA FROM UMAMMA

For most people Pisa is ninety minutes and a photograph. For our guests it is usually the first and last hour of the holiday, because Pisa International Airport is the closest airport to Umamma and the easiest place to pick up a car. Land, collect the hire car, drive 32 km — about 25 minutes, mostly on good road — and you are on the hill.

ARRIVAL, HONESTLY

Tell us your flight times when you book and we will send directions that work, including the last stretch through the town, which is the only part that needs explaining.

You park directly in front of the house. No public car park, no walking your luggage up through a medieval street — you pull up at the door, unload, and that is the end of the journey. If you would rather not drive at all on the first day, a private transfer from the airport can be arranged.

WORTH MORE THAN NINETY MINUTES

See the Piazza dei Miracoli early, before the coaches. The Tower is genuinely worth climbing, the Cathedral is better than the Tower, and the Camposanto — bombed in 1944, its frescoes painstakingly recovered — is the building almost nobody walks into and the one most people remember afterwards.

Then leave the piazza, which is the part most visitors never do. Pisa is a university city with a real student population and the street life that comes with it: the arcades of Borgo Stretto, the Vettovaglie market at midday, the Arno embankments in the evening. Better food than Florence, lower prices, a fraction of the crowd.

AND THE COAST, AND LUCCA

The same direction opens up the rest of western Tuscany. Lucca is 35 km and about 35 minutes, walled and flat and best seen from a bicycle on top of its ramparts. The Versilia beaches are a reasonable summer afternoon. Volterra sits close enough that on a clear day you can see it from the top of our hill.

None of it requires a plan. That is rather the point of having a base.