Arezzo Day Trips

We stayed several days in Arezzo and I enjoyed it. The old town section is small compared to someplace like Siena but the city is a mix of newer, flatter town and the older section running up the hill. It is much less touristy than Siena because it lacks block-buster sights but has many good restaurants. It is a very walkable city and mixes the old and the new in a very organic way which seems less "preserved in amber" than some of the famous towns and feels much more "everyday" Italian.

Hilltowns aren't generally the best for daytrips because of the logistics but Arezzo is close to the eastern side of Tuscany and Umbria so it's easy to visit places that are otherwise inconvenient. Cortona, or at least Camuccia-Cortona train station, is 20-30 minutes away by train. Chiusi-Chianciano train station is 45 minutes away and Perugia and Orvieto are an hour or so away by train as well.

Chiusi is a common base of exploration for the lower part of Tuscany Pienza, Montepulciano, Montelcino etc but those all generally require cars or tours. You could probably bus to one town a day Arrezo > Chuisi > Montepulciano and back but trying to connect towns in rural Tuscany - Montepulciano to Pienza - by public transportation is difficult. If you consider renting a car getting one in Chiusi-Chianciano is a popular choice because you avoid big city traffic and are close to rural Tuscany already.

If you want to visit the western Tuscany side it will usually involve going back to Florence and then out from there since it is the hub. Arezzo to Siena is either 3 hours by train looped back through Florence or 1.25 hours on the direct bus. I've taken that bus and while it's not an exciting ride it's easy and much faster.

All the train and bus tickets are clustered in an area around the "center" of town train station. I will admit that Arezzo follows the Tuscan tradition of not doing a great job of marking their bus stops or explaining their bus routes. The bus to Siena takes off from a very nondescript barely labelled bus stop that made me doubt I was in the right place while I was waiting. But it is all doable even of occasionally daunting, but as a planner I would have been more comfortable with more information from the states. The further you get from places they anticipate tourists - like local, rural buses - the less accommodations are made.

Hope that helps, have a great trip,
=Tod

Great info! Thanks!

From a scheduling perspective it might be useful to know that Arezzo has a very big antique fair every month. It's the first Sunday of the month and the previous Saturday.

Cortona, Castiglion Fiorentino, Lucignano, Poppi, Anghiari, Castiglion del Lago, Perugia, Orvieto, Loro Ciuffenna, are reachable by train or bus within one hour or so.

In bold use bus, in italics use either train or bus, everything else use train.

We were in that area for a wedding. Actually, we took the train from Rome to Arezzo, then a cab to Il Boro (a village, vineyards, and manor house renovated and restored by the Ferragamo family), where the wedding was--yes, pretty over the top. While we were there, we did side trips to Florence (arranged by the hosts) and Cortona.