From Piazza Bovio, a terrace suspended over the sea channel, Elba seems within arm's reach: Piombino is the port of the islands and capital of the Val di Cornia, with a soul of steel — the steelworks wrote its twentieth century — and an Etruscan one. At Populonia, on the gulf of Baratti, the only great Etruscan city on the sea shows necropolises, acropolis and mound tombs among the pines.
It was a principality, with Elisa Bonaparte as sovereign; the ravelin and citadel recall its borders. The gulf of Baratti, with its dark-sand sunsets, is among the Tuscan coast's best-loved landscapes.
Near Piombino
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
