BIENTINA

Museo della Storia Antica del Territorio di Bientina
The museum is housed in the 17th-century presently deconsecrated church of San Girolamo and documents the history of human settlement in the area around Bientina through a collection of finds from Villanovan period, the Iron Age and Etruscan and Roman times. The finds were unearthed in the old lake of Bientina the Lorraine dried out around the middle of the 19th century.

Museo di Arte Sacra della Pieve di Santa Maria Assunta
The museum is housed in the rectory of the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta. The church was built in the 15th century and, after having been enlarged in the 17th century, was remodelled in the following century. The church conserves the body of San Valentino Martire, the patron saint of Bientina, and many artworks concerning events in his life, as well as an exquisite 17th-century organ. The museum exhibits gold and silver liturgical items from the 16th to the 19th century, reliquaries made of wood and silver and sacred hangings from the 16th and 17th centuries.


CALCI

Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio dell`Università degli Studi di Pisa
Housed in the Carthusian monastery of Calci, it is the oldest museum of natural history in the world. The Museum of Natural History and of Calci Territory was founded in 1591 by Grand Duke Ferdinand I, who ordered the set-up of a gallery of natural specimens at Pisa`s "Giardino dei Semplici" (that is, the botanical garden). The museum possesses extensive and important palaeontological, zoological and mineralogical collections, as well as a series of rare and curious objects. It features also a spectacular whale gallery: the largest collection of whale skeletons in Italy and one of the most important in Europe.

Museo Nazionale della Certosa di Calci
Founded in 1366, the Carthusian monastery was subject to a succession of enlargement and renovation processes, especially in the first half of the 17th century. The museum sequence takes in the cloister, the cells of the monks, the church, the sacristy, the hermitic chapels, the chapter house, the refectory, the Grand Duke`s apartment and the guest quarters, where paintings from the Tuscan school, sculptures and frescoes from the 16th to the 19th century are to be admired. Of particular interest is also the richly and elegantly decorated pharmacy, which was founded in 1643 and ceased to operate in the early 20th century.


CAPANNOLI

Musei di Villa Baciocchi
Villa Baciocchi was built in the 18th century on the ruins of a medieval castle once belonging to the Gherardesca family. It houses a zoological museum and an archaeological documentation centre. The former exhibits taxidermied animals from all over the world, whereas the latter illustrates local history through a series of explanatory panels and a collection of finds that includes Etruscan urns and funeral gifts. In the garden of the villa, which was conceived in the second half of the 19th century by architect Luigi Bellincioni, are 12 monumental trees and 160 botanical species from all over the world.


CASCINA

Museo delle Arti e dei Mestieri del Legno
Founded with the purpose of promoting and valorising the woodworking crafts, the Museum of Woodworking Arts and Crafts exhibits a collection of drawings, machines, tools and materials used by the woodworking craftsmen of Cascina.


CASTELLINA MARITTIMA

Ecomuseo dell`Alabastro
The museum housed in the former Palazzo Opera Pia is part of the Ecomuseo dell`Alabastro, an eco-museum devoted to the extraction and crafting of alabaster in the province of Pisa, with three exhibition points in Castellina Marittima, Santa Luce and Volterra. Designed in a way that suggests a visit to a quarry, the museum displays historical documents and instruments and tools used to work alabaster.


CASTELNUOVO VAL DI CECINA

Aquae Populoniae - Area Archeologica delle Terme del Bagnone
The archaeological site has the remains of the sole surviving example of Etruscan baths from the late Hellenic Age. The baths were built in the 3rd century BC and remained in use throughout the 3rd century AD, after having been abandoned for almost a century because of the damage caused by an earthquake in the 1st century BC. The complex is probably to be identified as the Aquae Populoniae mentioned in the Tabula Peutingeriana, a 12th-13th-century copy of an ancient Roman map of the road network in the Roman Empire.

Museo della Civiltà Contadina di Montecastelli
Montecastelli Museum of Peasant Civilisation documents farming and handicraft activities in upper Val di Cecina through a collection of implements from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, including a flax-teasing machine and a loom. On display are also objects of domestic use and measurement instruments.


LARI

Museo Civico "F. Baldinucci"
The museum is housed in Palazzo dei Vicari, which was built in the 13th century in the place where once stood a castle mentioned in a document dated 732. On display are Etruscan, Roman, medieval and Renaissance finds, including 98 glazed-terracotta, tufa and marble crests, some of which are attributed to the Della Robbia.


MONTECATINI VAL DI CECINA

Museo delle Miniere
The visit to the Mine Museum begins in the documentation centre situated in Palazzo Pretorio, a 12th-century building that until 1953 was the seat of the city government. It conserves documents relative to the copper-mining activities of Montecatini Val di Cecina and the other mining resources of the area, especially geothermal energy, salt, alabaster and lignite. The visit continues in the mine of Caporciano, the richest copper mine in Europe, and in Alfredo pit, which was inaugurated in 1855. A path finally leads to the Muraglione dam, which was built to collect the water necessary to satisfy the needs of the mine.


MONTOPOLI IN VAL D`ARNO

Museo Civico di Palazzo Guicciardini
Palazzo Guicciardini Civic Museum was established to document local history and culture. The five sections it is divided into exhibit sacred furnishings, paintings by local artists active between the late 19th and the 20th century, historical documents, archaeological finds from the fortress destroyed in World War II, fossil finds and Etruscan and Roman terracotta and metal items. A room of the museum displays Milani terracotta, which were produced in Montopoli in the early 20th century.


PALAIA

Museo del Lavoro e della Civiltà Rurale
The Museum of Work and Rural Civilisation is housed in an 18th-century farmhouse and exhibits tools and implements related to weaving, animal husbandry, the production of olive oil and wine and everyday objects from the second half of the 18th to the first half of the 20th century, as well as documents pertaining to the financial management of the farm and a small collection of specimens of the local fauna. Outside the museum are working farm machines, wagons, mowing machines and other agricultural implements.


PECCIOLI

Museo delle Icone Russe
The museum is housed in Palazzo Pretorio, a medieval building that was remodelled in the 18th and in the 19th century. On display are the 19th- and 20th-century Russian icons Francesco Bigazzi bequeathed to the town and the 18th- and 19th-century icons forming Maria Clelia Loppi`s collection.


PISA

Battistero di San Giovanni
The construction of the largest baptistery in Italy, designed by architect Diotisalvi, was begun in 1153; Nicola and Giovanni Pisano ended it in the 13th century. The small dome at the top and the statue of Saint John the Baptist were added only centuries later. The baptistery contains many masterpieces, including the baptismal font and the exquisite pulpit sculpted by Nicola Pisano between 1255 and 1260.

Camposanto Monumentale
Built in the second half of the 13th century and badly damaged during World War II air raids, the Monumental Cemetery conserves important works of art, including medieval and 15th-century paintings and a collection of ancient sculptures and Roman sarcophagi. It conserves also the votive lamp that in past was suspended in the nearby cathedral and may have inspired Galileo Galilei`s studies of pendulum movement.

Cattedrale di Santa Maria
The cathedral, whose construction began in 1063 under the direction of Buscheto, was consecrated in 1118. It conserves many masterpieces, among which the marble pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, the bronze door by Bonanno Pisano, the mosaic by Cimabue in the apse and the paintings by Andrea del Sarto are really worth a mention.

Collezioni Egittologiche dell`Università degli Studi di Pisa
The museum exhibits the Picozzi bequest, a collection of archaeological finds and ethnographic curiosa that Gaetano Rossellini brought back from Egypt and Nubia, and the Schiff Giorgini collection: about 400 finds unearthed in Soleb and Sedeings, in Sudan. On display are also over 1,500 ostraka (terracotta fragments used as writing surfaces): documents written mainly in demotic from Augustan and post-Augustan times.

Collezioni Paleontologiche e Paletnologiche dell`Università degli Studi di Pisa
University of Pisa Palaeontological and Palaeo-Ethnological Collections originated from the findings unearthed by the Pisan physician Carlo Regnoli, who in 1867 directed the first excavations in the caves of Mount Pisano and the Apuan Alps. The collection includes artefacts in bone, metal, dressed stone and ceramics from the period between the Palaeolithic and the Bronze Age. The original nucleus has been enlarged with the addition of materials unearthed during excavations carried out by the professors of the University of Pisa in various parts of Italy. The museum exhibits also plaster casts of prehistoric artworks and a palaeontological collection consisting of the remains of mammals, malacofauna and microfauna.

Domus Mazziniana
The museum is set up in Palazzo Nathan-Rosselli, where Giuseppe Mazzini lived the last years of his life until his death on March 10th, 1872. On display are memorabilia from the Risorgimento, some clothes and Mazzini`s death mask. The library on the ground floor contains documents and studies by Mazzini.

Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe dell`Università degli Studi di Pisa
The collection includes over 8,000 works of modern and contemporary graphic art by such important artists as Fattori and Morandi, as well as an extensive documentation from the period between the 1950s and the 1970s.

Museo Anatomico Veterinario
The Veterinary Anatomical Museum, established in the second half of the 19th century in connection with veterinary medicine teaching activities, exhibits a collection of veterinary anatomical preparations from every species of domestic animals from the mid-19th century to the present days.

Museo degli Strumenti per il Calcolo
The Museum of Calculation Instruments conserves about 2,000 calculation instruments from the 17th to the 19th century and over 600 instruments relative to various scientific disciplines, including thermometers, scales, clocks, pneumatic machines and astronomical instruments. The collection includes a Galilean compass and instruments that once belonged to the Pisan physicist Antonio Pacinotti.

Museo dell`Opera del Duomo
The museum is housed in the Palazzo dei Canonici del Duomo and exhibits sacred objects, silver items and 17th- and 18th-century reliquaries from the Duomo, as well as bronze statues, sculptures and paintings from the other monuments in the square. A section of the museum is devoted to Etruscan, Roman and Egyptian finds.

Museo delle Sinopie
The museum is housed in the former Spedale Nuovo, also known as Spedale della Misericordia. On display are the preparatory drawings for the frescoes in the Monumental Cemetery, which were discovered when the frescoes were detached from the walls of the cemetery after the fire caused by an air raid in June 1944. The drawings are all produced with a particular technique that uses red earth pigments, called sinopia.

Museo di Anatomia e Istologia Patologica
The Museum of Anatomy and Pathological Histology was established in 1870 as a collection of anatomical-pathological items to be used in teaching and research, and has about 1,500 prepared anatomical specimens, some archaeological finds (especially mummies and funeral gifts) and wax models. The library annexed to the museum possesses 6,000 volumes and a collection of prints on pathological anatomy.

Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale
The museum is housed in a building built in the second half of the 16th century by order of Francis I de` Medici to a design by Bernardo Buontalenti. The palace that was built incorporating some pre-existing houses and was renovated in the 17th and 19th centuries conserves paintings by Raphael, Rosso Fiorentino, Bronzino and Antonio Canova, a collection of 15th- and 16th-century armours, sculptures, ivory miniatures, precious tapestries and other works of art from the courts of the Medici, Lorraine and Savoy households.

Museo Nazionale di San Matteo
Located in the monastery of San Matteo, it is Pisa`s most important museum of sculpture and painting and possesses one of the most important collections of medieval art in Europe. The monastery was built in the 11th century on a pre-existing building and then was enlarged in the 13th century; the pictorial decorations of its rooms date back to the 18th century. On display are works by leading Pisan and Italian artists from the 12th to the 17th century, Etruscan and Roman finds unearthed in various archaeological sites in the province of Pisa, Pisan and Islamic medieval ceramics, Greek-Byzantine works, a collection of coins from the 13th to the 19th century and a series of illuminated manuscripts from the 12th to the 14th century.

Orto Botanico e Museo Botanico
Established in the 16th century by order of Cosimo I de` Medici in the intent to collect herbs and plants with medicinal and pharmacological properties, it is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. It has been enlarged in the course of the centuries and nowadays it possesses a collection of Mediterranean, tropical and medicinal plants, some of which are more than a century old. A museum of natural history was annexed to the botanical garden around 1591, whereas the present botanical museum was established in the late 18th century. The museum exhibits collections of plants gathered for educational purposes, a collection of fossils from Tuscany and Lazio and wax models of fruit, macromycetes and anatomical parts of various plants, as well as a series of educational panels from the second half of the 19th century.

Torre Pendente
The construction of the bell tower of Pisa`s cathedral began in 1173 but ended only some two centuries later: the worksite activity was suspended for a long time due to the subsidence of the foundations. A spiral staircase with 294 steps leads up to the top of the tower, which offers a splendid view over the square and the town. The tower has seven bronze bells whose sounds reproduce the notes on the musical scale. Apart from being renowned for its slope, the tower is associated with Galileo Galilei`s experiments on the motion of bodies.


POMARANCE

Museo Bicocchi
With its rooms that still retain the original furnishings, its decorated ceilings and the exquisite ornaments, the house-museum offers insights into the life of a 19th-century middle-class family.

Museo della Geotermia ENEL
ENEL Museum of Geothermal Energy illustrates the history of the industrial exploitation of geothermal energy in the area of Larderello, which began in the early 19th century, although the first attempts at economic exploitation of boric acid had already been made in the previous century and the properties of boron salts were already known to the Etruscans and Romans. The world`s first geothermal plant was set up in 1913. The museum exhibits samples of minerals and rocks, drilling machines and instruments used in electric-power plants, as well as models illustrating the development of Larderello area, the extraction methods of boric acid and the production of electric energy.


PONTEDERA

Museo Piaggio "Giovanni Alberto Agnelli"
"Giovanni Alberto Agnelli" Piaggio Museum is housed in one of the oldest warehouses of the Piaggio plant in Pontedera and is organised in three sections: the first one is devoted to Vespa, the symbol of Italy`s economic recovery after World War II; the second section is devoted to Gilera motorcycles built from 1909 and the 1990s; the third and last section exhibits Piaggio products in other sectors of the transport industry. The historical archive annexed to the museum has all the company documents and a collection of photos, audiovisual materials and footages.


SAN MINIATO

Collezione dell`Arciconfraternita della Misericordia
The museum is housed in Palazzo Roffia, the headquarters of the Confraternity of the Misericordia built in the second half of the 16th century. On display are paintings, sculptures, sacred hangings, reliquaries and other liturgical items connected with the history and activities of the confraternity.

Conservatorio di Santa Chiara
The monastery of Santa Chiara was founded in the 13th century; a community of Poor Clare nuns occupied it until 1785, when Gran Duke Peter Leopold converted it into a conservatory of Oblate nuns. It contains an extensive collection of works of art and liturgical furnishings, as well as exquisite embroideries made by the nuns.

Museo Archeologico
The Archaeological Museum documents the history of San Miniato from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages, and that of San Genesio, a small town that was situated along the Via Francigena and was destroyed around the mid-13th century. Most of the Etruscan and Roman finds came to light in 1934 during excavation work in Fontevivo. Part of the exhibits was unearthed in San Genesio.

Museo Didattico della Civiltà della Scrittura
The Educational Museum of Writing Culture illustrates the most important stages in the history of writing through exhibits that document the evolution of signs, alphabets and materials on which words have been written and preserved.

Museo Diocesano
The museum set up in the former sacristy of the cathedral of Santa Maria and San Genesio displays paintings, liturgical furnishings and sculptures from the churches of the town and the diocese.

Oratorio del Loretino
From 1399 an image of the Most Holy Crucifix was venerated in this oratory built in the 13th century as a private chapel inside the communal palace. The crucifix was said to have miraculous powers. The oratory is decorated with 14th- and 15th-century frescoes; a carved, gilt-wood altar decorated with paintings and sculptures was added in 1527. In 1718 the image of the Most Holy Crucifix was moved to the homonymous church.

Raccolta dell`Accademia degli Euteleti
The academy was established in 1822 as a Scientific-Literary Society with the purpose of promoting the dissemination and development of literature, scientific knowledge and studies linked to the development of agriculture. In 1823 it was given the name of Accademia degli Euteleti, which it still retains. The collection is housed in Palazzo Migliorati, built in the 14th century and remodelled in the early 17th century, and documents the history of the academy.

Rocca di Federico II
Due to its strategic position, from the 11th century, the Swabes made San Miniato part of the imperial defensive system, which included also Foggia, Naples, Aversa, Gaeta, Prato, Fucecchio and Monselice. The citadel is all that remains of the keep that constituted the central part of the complex defensive system. After having been destroyed during World War II, the citadel was rebuilt in the 1950s on the site of the original stronghold.

Via Angelica
Via Angelica is an ancient road that runs along the right side of the church dedicated to San Jacopo and Santa Lucia and connects town and country. Along the road are three chapels decorated with frescoes from the 14th to the 18th century. The most important of the three chapels is the oratory of Sant`Urbano.


SANTA LUCE

Ecomuseo dell`Alabastro - Punto Museale di Santa Luce
Santa Luce exhibition point is part of the Eco-Museum of Alabaster and is housed in the former town hall. On display are alabaster items, working implements and photos. The Massetto quarry is the only tunnel-style gallery in existence for the production of "scaglione", one of the most prized varieties of alabaster.


SANTA MARIA A MONTE

Museo Casa Carducci
The museum is set up in the house where Giosuè Carducci lived with his family between 1856 and 1858. The figurative material, documents, photos and books offer insights into the life of Carducci`s family and the socio-cultural context of the period.


VICOPISANO

Rocca del Brunelleschi
Designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1438, after Vicopisano was conquered by Florence, the citadel is an excellent example of medieval and Renaissance military architecture. A 70-metre fortified wall connects the keep to a tower that stands down lower on Vicopisano hill.


VOLTERRA

Aree Archeologiche
In Vallebuona archaeological area have been unearthed a Roman theatre and the remains of 4th-century thermal baths. The archaeological park named after Enrico Fiumi comprises the Etruscan acropolis with the remains of two temples from the 3rd and 2nd century BC.

Ecomuseo dell`Alabastro - Punto Museale Centrale di Volterra
Volterra exhibition point of the Eco-Museum of Alabaster illustrates the history of how alabaster has been processed and traded from Etruscan times to the present day and is organised in two sections: one is devoted to the working techniques, whereas the other illustrates the history of alabaster processing. On display are Etruscan cinerary urns, medieval capitals, 18th- and 19th-century sculptures and items made by contemporary craftsmen and artists.

Museo Diocesano di Arte Sacra
The museum housed in the old cathedral rectory (now the Bishop`s palace) illustrates the history and evolution of liturgical objects through sculptures, paintings, gold items, sacred hangings and manuscripts from the cathedral and the churches of the diocese.

Museo Etrusco Guarnacci
Established in the middle of the 18th century, "Guarnacci" Etruscan Museum is one of the oldest Italian archaeological museums. On display are the pieces collected by the Volterra-born priest and archaeologist Mario Guarnacci, Neolithic and Eneolithic material, finds from the Iron Age, a collection of alabaster and tufa cinerary urns and some surgical instruments probably dating from the time of imperial Rome. An ancient workshop for the production of funerary urns has been reproduced on the second floor.

Palazzo Incontri Viti
The museum is situated in the palace built in the late 16th century by order of the Volterra-born nobleman Attilio Incontri; the façade of the palace is attributed to Ammannati. Giuseppe Viti, a traveller and trader in alabaster, bought the building in 1850 and had it remodelled. On show are paintings and ancient oriental and alabaster items.

Pinacoteca e Museo Civico
The museum is housed in 15th-century Palazzo Minucci Solaini and illustrates the role played by Volterra as a town open to the artistic influence of Florence, Pisa and Siena. On display are paintings, ceramics and copper and silver items from the 13th to the 17th century.