Pisa

Pisa can be seen in a day trip from Florence (an hour by train): the Piazza dei Miracoli, with the Leaning Tower, the Duomo and the Baptistery, can be fully covered in a few hours. April-June brings mild weather ahead of the humid Tuscan summer heat. It's cheaper than Florence, more suited to a short excursion than a long stay. Its Leaning Tower, the result of a 12th-century foundation error that was never fully corrected, paradoxically became one of the world's most photographed monuments precisely because of that flaw.