Lucca & Pisa Private Tour Your personal Tuscany experience

Two cities.
One perfect day.

Your driver is at your door. The road to Pisa begins.

Your private Mercedes driver meets you directly at your hotel, villa, or any address you choose — no transfer to a meeting point, no shared bus, no waiting in a queue. The day is organised around you from the first minute. Depending on where you are staying and what you want to see, your driver will suggest the best sequence for the day: Pisa first and Lucca in the afternoon, or Lucca first with a winery stop on the way — the itinerary is yours to decide, and your driver will optimise the route accordingly.

Arriving in Pisa, your driver takes you along the ancient city walls — the great medieval ramparts that once defined the boundaries of one of Italy's most powerful maritime republics. The road follows the Lungarno, the riverside boulevard running alongside the Arno, where the light off the water and the succession of old palaces give you the first sense of the city's scale and ambition. You will pass the Giardino Scotto — a public garden built inside a 14th-century fortress on the riverbank — and the small Chiesa di Santa Maria della Spina, one of the most extraordinary examples of Pisan Gothic architecture in existence: a tiny jewel of a church built directly on the edge of the Arno, encrusted with spires, tabernacles and sculptures, as if the stonemasons simply could not stop.

Crossing the Arno, your driver will show you the Cittadella — the great ancient fortress built in the Roman defensive tradition on the western bank of the river, the military heart of medieval Pisa and the point from which the city once controlled access from the sea. From there, the route continues along the Lungarno towards Piazza dei Cavalieri — the historic civic centre of Pisa, dominated by the Palazzo della Carovana with its extraordinary sgraffito facade, and home to the Scuola Normale Superiore, one of the most selective universities in Europe, founded by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1810. A brief stop here for photographs before continuing to the Campo dei Miracoli.

Your driver will drop you in the vicinity of the Leaning Tower — the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Tower itself arranged across one of the most extraordinary lawns in the world. Allow yourself time to walk the full perimeter, to look at the Cathedral facade, to understand the scale of what the Pisans built here at the height of their power in the 11th and 12th centuries. Your driver will be waiting for your return — always reachable by WhatsApp, and ready to come directly to you if needed.

Before leaving the Pisa area, if the timing allows and the idea appeals, your driver can take you to Marina di Pisa — the small seaside town at the mouth of the Arno, approximately 15 minutes from the Campo dei Miracoli. A working harbour with a quiet promenade, a handful of seafood restaurants on the waterfront, and the particular quality of light where a river meets the sea. It is the kind of stop that doesn't appear in guidebooks and stays with you precisely for that reason. A coffee, a walk along the shore, ten minutes watching the fishing boats — and then back on the road towards Lucca.

Leaving Pisa, your driver takes you along the Via dei Condotti — a remarkable road that follows the course of the Acquedotto Mediceo, the great aqueduct commissioned by the Medici in the 16th century to carry water from the mountains into Pisa. The road runs alongside the aqueduct arches through the village of Asciano Pisano, a stretch of countryside that very few visitors ever see. Below the hills, the panorama of Pisa opens up behind you — the dome of the Cathedral, the tower, the plain stretching to the coast — before the road descends towards Lucca through open farmland lined with the characteristic villas of the Lucchesia: the great country residences built by Lucca's merchant families in the 17th and 18th centuries, each surrounded by formal gardens and cypress alleys.

If a winery stop is part of your day, this is the natural moment for it. The hills around Montecarlo — a small hilltop town between Pisa and Lucca — produce some of the most distinctive white wines in Tuscany, largely unknown outside the region. A visit to a family estate here, with a tasting in the cellar or under a pergola overlooking the vines, takes approximately 45 minutes and can be arranged in advance. Your driver will coordinate timing around the rest of the day.

In Lucca, you enter the city through one of the great gates in the Renaissance walls — the most perfectly preserved city walls in Italy, wide enough at the top for an avenue of trees and a promenade that runs the full 4 kilometres around the city. Your driver will take you to the Palazzo del Turismo on Piazzale Verdi, where the tourist office can provide maps, information on open churches and current exhibitions. From there, the city is yours to explore on foot.

The natural axis of Lucca is the Via Fillungo — the long, narrow commercial street that has been the soul of the city for centuries, lined with medieval towers, Art Nouveau shopfronts, jewellers, bookshops and cafes. It connects the great piazzas: Piazza San Michele in Foro, built on the site of the ancient Roman forum, with its extraordinary Romanesque church whose marble facade climbs far above the roofline in a cascade of blind arcades and columns; Piazza Anfiteatro, the elliptical square built directly over the foundations of the Roman amphitheatre, its curved perimeter of medieval houses still following the exact outline of the original arena; and the Cathedral of San Martino, with its asymmetric facade and the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto — one of the masterpieces of Italian Gothic sculpture. If time and energy allow, bicycles can be hired at Piazzale Verdi to ride the walls — one of the most pleasant half-hours available anywhere in Tuscany.

At the agreed time, your driver will be waiting at Piazzale Verdi for the return journey. Throughout the day, your driver remains in direct contact by WhatsApp — and if at any point you need the vehicle to come to you rather than walking back, it will be there within minutes.