Inland Versilia

A few kilometres back from the beaches, at the foot of the hills, lie the older towns. Pietrasanta and Camaiore were both laid out by Lucca in the 13th century, when it was securing its way to the port of Motrone; Massarosa, on the hills above Lake Massaciuccoli, split from Viareggio in 1869.

Pietrasanta was founded in 1255 and has lived from marble ever since: Michelangelo came here looking for it, and it marks the town's finest buildings, the cathedral of San Martino above all. After the Second World War artists working in marble and bronze moved in, with copyists' workshops and foundries around them; Henry Moore, Joan Miró, Fernando Botero and Igor Mitoraj all lived and worked here. Botero's bronze Warrior stands in Piazza Matteotti, and the Museo dei Bozzetti in the cloister of Sant'Agostino keeps sculptors' plaster models.

Camaiore grew on the Via Francigena: Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury listed it as a stage of his route, and its abbey of San Pietro is documented from 761. For Corpus Domini the procession walks over carpets of coloured sawdust more than 40 m long, laid through the night.

Massarosa holds most of Lake Massaciuccoli, 6.9 km² of open water inside the Migliarino, San Rossore, Massaciuccoli nature park. At Massaciuccoli the LIPU runs the Chiarone reserve, where more than 200 bird species are seen through the year, and the remains of Roman baths lie in the hills nearby.