Pisa

Building began in 1173, and by the 3rd storey the ground had already sunk and the tower leaned. Climbing needs a ticket with an entry time, and bags cannot go up, so they go to the cloakroom beside the ticket office. Children under 8 may not climb.

A Romanesque church begun in 1064, holding the pulpit carved by Giovanni Pisano. Entry is free, but you still collect a timed pass at the ticket office before the door lets you in. The lamp said to have set Galileo thinking about pendulums still hangs there.

The largest baptistery in Italy, with a pulpit by Nicola Pisano inside. Sound lingers under the dome, so at set times a guard shuts the doors and sings a few notes to let the echo build. From the upper gallery the cathedral front faces you square on.

An old cemetery ringed by cloisters, said to hold earth crusaders shipped from Golgotha. Shelling in 1944 melted the lead roof onto the frescoes, and The Triumph of Death returned to its wall only after decades of restoration. The square's noise stays outside.

The Knights of St Stephen, founded by the Medici, had their base here, and Vasari's Palazzo della Carovana, its plaster scratched into patterns, fills one side. The Scuola Normale now uses the building, so in exam season students sit studying on its steps.

A small Gothic church on the Arno bank, so crowded with pinnacles it looks like a jewel box. Floods kept reaching it, so in 1871 it was dismantled and rebuilt piece by piece on slightly higher ground. The inside rarely opens, so most see it from outside.

The river bends through the city with painted palaces along both banks. After dark on 16 June the Luminara sets rows of candles along their windows and cornices, and the next day a rowing race runs on the river. Spots by the water fill from the afternoon.

In 1998 works near San Rossore station turned up several Roman ships buried in mud, now laid out in the Medici shipyard buildings. Here you learn the old harbour lay where there is now dry land. The tower square is a short stroll off.

Keith Haring painted it on the back wall of a church in 1989, one of the last public works he left. Some thirty figures tangle together about peace. It stands by the street a few minutes' walk from the central station, to be seen any time without a ticket.

A thirty-minute train ride brings you to Lucca, whose walls survive whole with a tree-shaded promenade along the top. One lap runs a little over 4km, so many rent bikes near the gates to ride it. From up there you look down onto the roofs inside.

Set up by the University of Pisa in 1544, Europe's first university botanical garden. Its current plot dates from the late sixteenth century. The tower square is only a few streets off, yet visitors are scarce and a shaded bench is always to be had.

Medieval Pisan painting and sculpture in a former convent on the Arno. Simone Martini's polyptych, Masaccio's St Paul and a reliquary bust of a saint by Donatello are here. The tour groups at the tower almost never make it this far.

A medieval shopping street lined with arcades on both sides, where Pisans take their evening stroll. Long-standing pastry shops and cafes keep their places under the arches. On rainy days you can walk its length under cover.

In Lucca, about 30 minutes from Pisa by train, the Guinigi Tower has oak trees growing on its top. Climb it and you look over red roofs from under their shade. The nearby Piazza dell'Anfiteatro is a ring of houses built on the outline of a Roman amphitheatre.

A fourteenth-century Carthusian monastery in the hills east of Pisa, its cloister ringed by the small houses where each monk lived alone. One wing is the University of Pisa's natural history museum, with a long glass gallery of hanging whale skeletons.