A Monastery & A Wildlife Area Near Pisa -- Twenty kilometers (12 miles) or so east of Pisa outside the town of Calci lies the largest and most interesting Carthusian monastery in Italy, the Certosa di Calci (tel. 050-938-430). It was founded in 1366, but most of its current facade dates from the 18th and 19th centuries. You can see this huge complex of baroque frescoed chapels and cloisters during a fascinating guided tour leading you through 11 chapels, the main church, and a monk's "cell." The University of Pisa also keeps a natural history museum here (tel. 050-936-193 or 050-937-092), with a large taxonomy collection, including a dinosaur and an articulated giraffe skeleton. The Certosa is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:30am to 6:30pm, and Sunday from 8:30am to 12:30pm year-round. Admission is 4€ ($5.20), with guided tours on the hour. The natural history museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 9am to 5pm (Sun 9am-6pm), and admission is an additional 5€ ($6.50). The best way to get to the Certosa is by taking the APT bus to Montemagno, which lets you off at the gates, rather than the one to Calci. (Catch the bus in Pisa at Piazza Sant'Antonio, off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.)
Just west of Pisa, close enough that you can take city bus no. 11 (from Lungarno Gambacorti) to get there, begins the Tenuta di San Rossore (tel. 050-530-101; www.parcosanrossore.it). This was once the summer estate of Italy's president, but in 1988 it was turned into a publicly owned park system along with a few other areas along the coast. It now forms part of one of Tuscany's most precious protected wildlife areas, a coastal zone of dense pines with populations of wild deer, boars, and aquatic birds surrounding several beaches and some boggy wetlands. Although it isn't open to the public often, it is well worth the free visit, from Saturday to Sunday 8:30am to 5:30pm in winter, till 9:30pm in summer (they also run various guided tours for modest fees -- in Italian naturally, but since they include walking, biking, and horseback visits, they can be fun even if you don't understand the language; the website has details). In 1822 at the beach at Gombo, now part of the park, the body of self-exiled English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley washed ashore (he drowned while sailing off the coast; many hold it was a pirate murder).
