Hydro cures were offered at Montecatini’s six baths 200 years ago, when Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany made them fashionable. Over the salty, sulphurous waters new baths have been constructed and modern programmes offer such arcane treatments as aerosol therapy, ascendant showers and nebulization.

The town is an integrated architectural whole, its axis the Grand Avenue of the Baths. It is visited by more than a million people every year.

Montecatini has hundreds of hotels and restaurants, a wide range of sports and games facilities and, at nearby Pievaccia, a golf course. There are symphony concerts in summer. That essential feature of the up-to-date spa town, a gallery of modern art, attracts visitors on its own account. A cable railway connects the baths with a mountain suburb, Montecatini Alto, where the surviving turrets of a vast fortress recall desperate battles in the old three-cornered Pisa-Lucca-Florence contest. In the hills to the north of town there is pleasant motoring and excellent walking.

Massa, Cozzile and Buggiano are historic centres which deserve more foreign visitors. In the Buggiano district, near the Padule, stands the abandoned Bellavissa Villa with 17thC frescos. Northward again, towards Monte Lignana, you are on the popular Valleriana trekking route which ends at Collodi. Horses and mountain bikes may be hired at Montecatini Terme.