The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Tuscany
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Tuscany are Piazza del Duomo, Pisa, Piazza del Campo and Piazza dell'Anfiteatro. The list covers 5 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Tuscany invented much of what Europeans still expect from a public square. Its medieval city-republics — Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca — competed through architecture, and each built its civic heart as a statement: a town hall tower, a cathedral, a fountain, a paved open space where markets, councils and festivals took place. Because many of these towns lost power before the industrial age, their centres were never rebuilt wholesale, and the squares survive with their original proportions, stone and skyline.
In Pisa, the Piazza del Duomo sets the cathedral, baptistery, Camposanto and the leaning bell tower on a lawn of open grass, a white marble ensemble unlike any other square in Italy. Siena's Piazza del Campo slopes like a shell toward the Palazzo Pubblico, its brick paving split into nine sectors, and twice each summer it becomes the track for the Palio horse race.
Lucca's Piazza dell'Anfiteatro is a ring of houses built over the oval of a Roman amphitheatre, so the ancient arena survives as a shape rather than a ruin. In Florence, Piazza della Signoria gathers the Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia dei Lanzi and the Neptune Fountain into an open-air gallery of Renaissance sculpture, while Piazzale Michelangelo, laid out in the nineteenth century on the hill across the Arno, looks back over the dome, the river and the towers of the whole city.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Piazza del Duomo, Pisa | Square | ✓ |
| 2 | Piazza del Campo | Square | ✓ |
| 3 | Piazza dell'Anfiteatro | Square | |
| 4 | Piazzale Michelangelo | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 5 | Piazza della Signoria | Square |
01 Piazza del Duomo, Pisa
Piazza dei Miracoli
Italy · 0.5 km from Pisa43.723° N 10.395° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Pauline_17 from Pixabay The cathedral came first, begun in 1064 to designs by the architect Buscheto, whose tomb is set into the facade. Its front is layered with open arcaded galleries, and worshippers have traditionally entered not through the main doors but through the Porta di San Ranieri facing the tower, whose bronze panels Bonanno Pisano made around 1180.
Did you know? Cimabue's head of Saint John in the apse mosaic was his last known work before his death in Pisa.
02 Piazza del Campo
Italy · 1.5 km from Siena43.318° N 11.331° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Zotx from Pixabay The square grew from an open space on a slope where the three hill communities that merged to form Siena met. It served as market, meeting place and arena long before it was formalised. Medieval Siena was a rich, self-governing city-state and Florence's great rival, and its government made the Campo a statement of civic pride.
Did you know? The tower is said to have been built to the same height as Siena Cathedral, a sign that civic and church power stood as equals.
03 Piazza dell'Anfiteatro
Italy · 16.3 km from Pisa43.845° N 10.506° E
Kasa Fue · CC BY-SA 4.0 The amphitheatre was built in the Roman town of Luca, generally dated to the second century AD; at its height it is said to have held some 10,000 spectators on around eighteen tiers of seats. After antiquity its masonry was not demolished but absorbed: houses, storerooms, a salt depot, a powder magazine and a prison were gradually wedged into the arena and built against the old arcades.
Did you know? The amphitheatre was built outside the Roman town walls, next to the north gate, rather than in the heart of the city.
04 Piazzale Michelangelo
Italy · 2.3 km from Florence43.763° N 11.265° E
Michael Wittwer · CC BY-SA 4.0 The terrace is not an old belvedere but a piece of nineteenth-century city planning. In the years when Florence was briefly the capital of the newly united Italy, the city set about a sweeping programme of renewal, and the architect Giuseppe Poggi laid out the Viale dei Colli, a tree-lined avenue of some eight kilometres winding up through the hills south of the river.
Did you know? More than two thousand iris varieties grow on the garden's slopes, including a large collection of historic irises donated from the Presby Memorial Garden in New Jersey.
05 Piazza della Signoria
Italy · 1.2 km from Florence43.770° N 11.256° E
Image by JobiWan from Pixabay The square is ruled by the Palazzo Vecchio, the massive, crenellated Romanesque fortress-palace that served as the town hall and seat of government. Beside it opens the Loggia dei Lanzi, a set of wide arches on Corinthian capitals that has become one of the finest open-air sculpture galleries anywhere.
Did you know? One of the Medici lions in the Loggia dei Lanzi is a reworked 2nd-century Roman sculpture; its partner was carved by Flaminio Vacca in 1598.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Tuscany?
- On our list, Piazza del Duomo, Pisa ranks first, followed by Piazza del Campo and Piazza dell'Anfiteatro.
- Why is Siena's Piazza del Campo shaped like a shell?
- The square fills a natural hollow where several hills meet, and its sloping brick paving fans out toward the Palazzo Pubblico at the lowest point. The nine sectors of the paving are traditionally linked to the Council of Nine that governed medieval Siena.
- Why is Lucca's Piazza dell'Anfiteatro oval?
- The houses around it were built on the foundations of a Roman amphitheatre, so the square keeps the outline of the ancient arena. The space was cleared and opened up as a public square in the nineteenth century.
- What is in Pisa's Piazza del Duomo besides the Leaning Tower?
- The square also holds the cathedral, the circular baptistery and the Camposanto, a monumental cemetery. Together they form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in Tuscany?
- The list covers 5 squares, streets and monuments.