Versilia, Tuscany.

The hills and coastline of north-west Tuscany — Pietrasanta's galleries, Forte dei Marmi's beach clubs and the Apuan Alps rising behind, with Lucca and Pisa half an hour away.

On Versilia

Versilia,
from Smaranda.

Versilia is Tuscany's fashionable coast, the ten-kilometre run of fine sand under the Apuan Alps where Italian summer has been conducted with full seriousness since the 1920s. Forte dei Marmi is its capital: cabana rows in family hands for generations, bicycles as the only sensible transport, and the Wednesday market where the well-dressed of Milan buy cashmere from stalls. Behind the beach, Pietrasanta has been the sculptors' town since Michelangelo came for the marble, and its bronze foundries and studios still draw artists from everywhere; Botero worked here for decades and left frescoes in the Misericordia church.

We keep no houses on the beachfront, deliberately: the coast in season is for days, not for sleeping. The pattern our guests use is a villa in the Lucca countryside, thirty to forty minutes inland, with Versilia as the sea-day valve: a booked beach club for the day, dinner in Pietrasanta's gallery-lined centre, and the quiet of the villa to return to. The Castelfalfi estate runs its own Forte dei Marmi beach-club arrangement in season.

When to come

June to September for the full beach-club season; May and late September for the coast without the column of Milanese traffic. August is peak everything: atmosphere, prices and crowds.

Towns worth knowing

Forte dei Marmi: The beach-club capital; the Wednesday market is an event in its own right.
Pietrasanta: Little Athens: sculpture studios, foundries, galleries and the coast's best dining.
Torre del Lago: Puccini's lakeside villa; the open-air opera festival each July and August.
Camaiore: The workaday inland town; honest shops and none of the seafront pricing.

Best for

Sea days from a Lucca villa base
Families who want sand rather than coves
Sculpture and gallery afternoons in Pietrasanta
Puccini evenings at Torre del Lago

Practicalities

Beach clubs book by the day or week; in July and August reserve ahead and we arrange it. From the Coselli villas the drive is about forty minutes; the A12 exit at Versilia saves the coast road in season.