Pisa

Pisa is famous for a mistake: a white marble tower that began to lean before it was even finished, and leans still. It stands on a wide green lawn beside Pisa Cathedral, whose striped marble shifts colour with the light. The rest of the city is far less known, and livelier. This is a student town, home to one of the oldest universities in Europe, and the tables around Piazza dei Cavalieri fill up after dark. The Arno runs through it between ochre and pink facades, and the sunset is watched from the quays. The food is Tuscan and coastal at once: pasta with clams, chickpea soup, grilled beef from the hills inland. The sea begins ten kilometres away, behind the umbrella pines of San Rossore Park, and Florence is an hour by train.