Camaiore

Last updated: November 1, 2026

Many visitors know Camaiore only through its beach, Lido di Camaiore. The town itself lies inland, and it has a much older story. Its name comes from the Latin Campus Maior, “the large plain”: the broad plain at the foot of the Apuan Alps that links Lucca to the old port of Luni. Pilgrims have stopped here for more than a thousand years.

Camaiore is also the place to understand what “Versilia” really means. In its historic sense, Versilia is the four comuni of the old Capitanato di Pietrasanta: Pietrasanta, Seravezza, Stazzema, and Forte dei Marmi. A papal arbitration by Leo X, the Medici pope, placed them under Florence on 29 September 1513. Camaiore and Viareggio stayed with Lucca. Today’s tourist Versilia also takes in Viareggio, Camaiore, and Massarosa.

So this is the Lucchese side of the coast. Come for a mitred abbey on the pilgrims’ road, a wooden Madonna who lost her arms, and a night in late May or June when the streets disappear under carpets of colored sawdust.

A Place Shaped by Time

A stage on the road to Rome

Around 990, the itinerary of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury listed Camaiore as stage XXVII, between Lucca (XXVI) and Luni (XXVIII). Modern Via Francigena walkers still use Camaiore as a stage end: stage 26 arrives from Massa, and stage 27 leaves for Lucca.

Monks were here even before Sigeric. A Benedictine monastery, the Badia di San Pietro, is first documented here in 761. In 1180 Pope Alexander III gave it authority over the churches of San Michele in Camaiore, San Biagio in Lombrici, and San Frediano in Pedona. He also gave its abbot the right to a mitre and crosier. On the Francigena, this was a monastery with real power.

Lucca’s walled outpost

In 1374 Lucca ousted the local feudal lords and began fortifying Camaiore. The deal for residents was generous. Anyone who helped build the walls was exempt from every tax except the salt tax. Pietrasanta and the Massa–Luni area, meanwhile, had to send five days of labor per citizen. Seven years later, Camaiore was described as a well-fortified castle.

Florence took the town in 1437, but it later returned to Lucca. In 1617 Lucca made Viareggio the main town of the vicariate, and Camaiore lost most of its territory. It stayed Lucchese until 1847, when it joined the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

What to See and Do

The Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta

Camaiore’s main church is documented in 1260 as Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae de Burgo Campi Majoris. Its façade dates from 1458, and it became a collegiate church in 1515.

Inside, look for a medieval wooden crucifix. Pier Dandini painted the Communion of the Apostles, and Stefano Tofanelli the Annunciation (1805). Check the fonts too. One has a 14th-century marble basin. The other carries the Guinigi arms and a Latin inscription: “Venite filii audite me timore Domini docebo vos.”

The armless Madonna

The best single reason to visit is in the Museo d’Arte Sacra. The museum, in the 17th-century seat of the Confraternita di San Michele Arcangelo, gathers works from churches across the comune. Its star is Matteo Civitali’s Annunciata, also called the Madonna dell’attesa. She is a life-size Virgin in painted wood, 158 cm tall, carved before 1484.

She has no arms, and there is a theory for that. A 1484 inventory of the Collegiata records two dresses for “Nostra Donna,” one of damask and one mulberry-colored. Finestre sull’Arte suggests the statue wore real clothes, and that altering her for changing fashions probably cost her the arms.

In 1998 Carlo Pedretti called her “la pulzella di Camaiore” (the maid of Camaiore) and compared her with drawings by Leonardo. Since a 2008 exhibition on Civitali’s five wooden Madonnas, scholars such as Antonia D’Aniello have leaned toward reading her as a pregnant Virgin. Few English-language guides mention her at all.

The Badia di San Pietro

The abbey stands on Via Badia. Cistercians took it over in 1217. Pope Clement VII suppressed it in 1527 and gave its property to Lucca’s Ospedale di San Luca. Giuseppe Pardini restored it in 1856–59, almost entirely rebuilding the bell tower. What survives is the church, part of the refectory, and the monastery gateway, topped by a statue of St. Peter. Stand at that gateway and remember that the monastery was already more than two centuries old when Sigeric listed Camaiore.

The Pieve di Santo Stefano

The Pieve di Camaiore was one of the five pievi (mother churches) of Versilia antiqua, and the mother church of the Camaiore territory. With full parish rights, it alone could baptize, bury, and collect tithes. It stands on a rise beside the old Francigena as it comes in from Lucca.

The Civico Museo Archeologico

The archaeology museum occupies Palazzo Tori Massoni, a late-16th-century palace on Piazza Francigena. Its 13 rooms include touch, sound, and smell stations, which children tend to enjoy. Highlights include a cast of a Neanderthal burial about 50,000 years old and Copper Age daggers from the Buca del Corno. Check hours on the provincial museums page or the comune’s page.

Sawdust carpets for Corpus Domini

On the Saturday night before the Corpus Domini procession, Camaiore’s tappetari (carpet makers) take over the old center. Working through the night, they lay poplar and fir sawdust dyed with aniline through carved plywood stencils. A single carpet can run up to 50 m long and 3 m wide. On Sunday morning the procession walks straight over them, and city crews sweep them away afterward.

A Corpus Domini procession is recorded in Camaiore since 1495, and sawdust carpets are documented since 1930. The tradition stopped only during the war.

It has also been political. In the 1950s the local Communist Party and Christian Democrat groups each made rival carpets nearly 200 m long. In 1968 students turned their carpet into a protest against the Vietnam War and world hunger. Police removed stones and barbed wire before the procession passed. Corpus Domini moves every year, usually to late May or June, so check the date on the comune’s website before you plan.

Casoli, the graffiti village

Up in the hills, Casoli is covered in sgraffiti, wall pictures made with sandstone, colored lime, and metal powder, mostly in red, yellow, and brown. The tradition began when the painter and sculptor Rosario Murabito settled here in the early 1950s and made one in the main square. Subjects range from the Odyssey to a Narcissus inside the old washhouse. The village holds an annual Sgraffiti di Casoli event.

Casoli also has a wartime history. It was an early center of the Versilian Resistance. On 5 August 1944 an SS patrol captured Gian Domenico, Modesto, and Ivana Pardini while they were herding animals near the village, and executed them.

Gombitelli, a northern island in the hills

Gombitelli sits at about 500 m and has around 100 residents. In the second half of the 15th century, settlers from northern Italy, many of them former mercenaries, came here to repopulate the area after plague. They worked iron, making nails and weapons. Their speech mixed Lombard, Piedmontese, and Emilian features, and it was spoken until the 1950s. It is now extinct. In the First World War the village supplied nails for Italian soldiers.

Lido di Camaiore

The coastal frazione grew as a resort mainly after the Second World War, though D’Annunzio and others came from the early 1900s. Today it has about 3 km of seafront promenade. Its pier is modern, not historic: the comune approved the project on 28 December 2005. It ends in a circular platform of 700 m².

Eating Like a Local

On feast days, Camaiore eats tordelli: half-moon pasta stuffed with meat and served with ragù. There is no codified recipe; versions vary by place and by family. Visit Tuscany’s Versilia recipe uses beef, chicken, pork, mortadella, egg, parmesan, parsley, garlic, and milk-soaked bread. Lucca’s municipal recipe adds chard and wild thyme. Treat them as cousins, and try more than one.

Look out for local pork, too. Visit Tuscany singles out the strongly flavored mortadella di Camaiore, local lardo, and biroldo, a sausage of pork blood and offal, made in the Camaiore area. At Easter, bakeries and families make torta di pepe, a spiced rice tart.

Down at the Lido, octopus is cooked without tomato, often with potatoes.

The olive oil falls under the Lucca DOP, which covers all seven Versilia comuni. Camaiore is also within the area of the olivo quercetano, a local olive protected as a Slow Food Presidium. Versilia has no wine denomination of its own. Its small production is bottled as Toscana or Costa Toscana IGT.

For a restaurant meal on the coast, Il Merlo in Lido di Camaiore is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.

Getting There and Getting Around

By car: use the Viareggio–Camaiore exit of the A12 motorway. A car makes Casoli, Gombitelli, and the other hill villages much easier to reach.

By train: the comune’s own station is Camaiore Lido-Capezzano. Viareggio and Pietrasanta stations, on the Tirrenica line, are the other options. Check timetables on Trenitalia.

By bus: Autolinee Toscane runs local buses. Check routes and timetables at at-bus.it.

On foot: Camaiore is the end of Via Francigena stage 26 from Massa and the start of stage 27 to Lucca. It makes a natural overnight stop if you are walking the route.

When to go: Corpus Domini weekend shows the town at its most itself. Be in the old center late on Saturday night or early on Sunday, before the procession.

Nearby

• Pietrasanta: the next stop north on the Francigena, and Versilia’s workshop city of marble and bronze.
• Viareggio: the Carnival city on the coast, which replaced Camaiore as the vicariate’s main town in 1617.
• Massarosa and Lake Massaciuccoli: Lucchese hill villages, a Roman villa, and the lake to the south.
• Sant’Anna di Stazzema: the hill village where SS troops killed hundreds of civilians on 12 August 1944, now a place of memory.
• Lucca: the end of Francigena stage 27 and the city that ruled Camaiore for most of its history.

For the bigger picture, start with our guide to Versilia and the Apuan Alps.

Information is provided in good faith and may change. Always confirm opening hours, prices, and event dates with the official source before you travel.