Pisa is one of the best bases in Tuscany for day trips because the train station has frequent direct services to half the region. Lucca, half an hour away, is the obvious first choice — a perfectly preserved walled city you can circle on a rented bike along the top of the Renaissance ramparts. Livorno is twenty minutes south for the seafood and the canals of the Venezia Nuova quarter.
Further out, Volterra (an hour and a half by bus) gives you Etruscan walls and alabaster workshops on a hilltop, while Viareggio and the Versilia beaches are a 20-minute train ride north for an afternoon by the sea. Florence itself is an hour by train and easy to do as a day trip in reverse if Pisa is your base — most travellers do it the other way around.
