Pisa is just a few kilometres from the wide beaches at Versilia, where the River Arno widens and flows out into the sea.
These days, Pisa is a key Tuscan transport hub, with harbour, airport, train station and motorways. Pisa’s airport is the biggest in
Tuscany and it is easy to get from here to Pisa town centre and to
Florence Central Station.
Pisa has a well-renowned university, one of the world’s top institutions for physics and maths, and a large military base. Many famous brains have studied at Pisa, including Galileo and Enrico Fermi.
The best time to visit Pisa has got to be when they have their annual festival to honour their patron saint, San Ranieri, on 16th and 17th June As a part of this festival, there is a huge battle for possession of Ponte di Mezzo (the town’s main bridge over the Arno), where residents of the northern part of Pisa fight rivals from the southern end. The whole town participates in the party, which has a medieval feel to it. All the residential districts make sure that their representatives are properly dressed in traditional costumes.
Yet for the rest of the year town life is normally quiet. Despite the fact that there are lots of young people in town, it’s not easy to find any discos in the area because for years the town council has had a policy to ’protect’ students from out of town. But the coast is just 10-20 minutes drive away, and there is plenty of nightlife to be found out there.
