Town osterias, country restaurants, pizzerias and terraces looking out over the hills. In Riparbella you eat the cooking of the woods and the vegetable garden — Riparbella-style wild boar, zonzellona, Riparbella-style soup, new olive oil and the wines of the nine wineries.
In Riparbella the cooking tells you about the land: game from the woods around the town , hand-rolled fresh pasta, produce from the garden, home-made cured meats, extra virgin olive oil and the wines of the hills.
Every place has its own character — the game osteria in the town, the one deep in the woods, the pizzeria with a view over the hills, the resort restaurant, the wine bar where you drink the wine made here. The thread that ties them together is wild boar, which in Riparbella even has a recipe of its own.
A medieval hilltop town stretched along a ridge of white tufa at 216 m above sea level, in the province of Pisa, between the Val di Cecina and the Etruscan Coast. It grows in a line along the ridge — not on a circular plan like the neighbouring towns — with 13 murals in the old town, nine wineries in the countryside and around 65 km of green trails.
| By car | Exit at Cecina Nord on the SS1 Aurelia / Variante Aurelia, then SP 13 del Commercio . Cecina 10 km (15′) · Livorno 50 km (45′) · Pisa 65 km (55′) · Volterra 35 km (40′) · Florence 130 km (1h 45′). |
| By train | The nearest useful station is Cecina , on the Pisa–Rome Tyrrhenian line; from there you continue by bus, taxi or hire car. The Cecina–Saline di Volterra railway is not in service and is replaced by buses: the San Martino stop is therefore not a useful arrival point. |
| By bus | Riparbella is served by regional bus routes with their terminus in Cecina: up-to-date timetables and stops at at-bus.it. |
| By bike | Anello del Vino : 42 km and around 1,000 m of ascent taking in the nine wineries. Bike racks in the old town and e-bike charging points. |
You can walk across the town in a few minutes: leave the car in one of the car parks along the ridge. On the map they are marked with the letters A–I from south to north, and every card has a direct link to Google Maps.
There are 13 so far : every year, on the last weekend in September , the festival La Collina delle Fiabe adds new ones. They are painted by international artists working with residents and with the owners of the walls, and each one tells a story about Riparbella or is connected to the town in some way. You can see them all on foot in half an hour, all in the old town, along with the twenty hand-painted artist benches .
The project was started in 2018 by the municipal administration with the association StArt Attitude and funding from the GAL Etruria, with the idea of turning the town into an open-air contemporary art museum. You can follow the route on your own with the map from the tourist office, or join a guided tour led by volunteers.
Tourist office / Town Hall
Piazza del Popolo 1 · 0586 697111
Municipal pharmacy
Piazza Matteotti
Carabinieri
Riparbella, north side
Tourism portal
visitriparbella.com
| 25–26 April | Pianeta Ripa |
| May | Ripa Fiorita — flowers and tradition. From May, Via di Piazzetta becomes the street of coloured umbrellas |
| 24 June | Night of San Giovanni |
| July | Ripa Wine — wine and music |
| early August | Agrifiera |
| late August | RipaTalent |
| last weekend in September | La Collina delle Fiabe — street art festival: the new murals are created |
| November | Sagra del Cinghiale wild boar festival · Festival of Tradition and New Olive Oil |
| December – January | RipaChristmas and the Mechanical Nativity Scene |
Content from the Riparbella tourist office and the portal visitriparbella.com, data from the BiciInComune app and base mapping by OpenStreetMap. The car park locations are those given by the tourist office. Some points in the centre have a position estimated along the street from the house number: their card says so.
An interactive map, opened on the places to eat. Tap a marker for contact details, opening times and directions in Google Maps; with the filters at the top you can switch to wineries, murals, car parks and trails. The scroll wheel zooms after a click inside the map, so the page scrolls normally.
In the town you eat a few steps from the murals; up in the hills, with the sea on the horizon and the woods all around.
A selection of town osterias, pizzerias, country and resort restaurants, a farm stay, two wine bars and the town’s cafés. Contact details for booking directly — in high season, and in the smaller places, it is best to call ahead.
In the heart of the town of Riparbella, where the old Trattoria del Papero once stood, Bistrot 1986 welcomes guests in an intimate, carefully kept and elegant setting that combines warm Tuscan hospitality with the chic style of a typical French bistro.
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Restaurant, pizzeria and grill house with a panoramic terrace over the Tuscan hills. Pizzas, home-made pasta and grilled meat. It is small, so it is worth booking in high season. Open for lunch and dinner (Mon–Tue dinner only).
An osteria surrounded by the greenery of the Il Giardino reserve, with a veranda and a picnic area. Local Tuscan cooking, home-made cured meats and cheeses, grilled meat. Open Saturdays and Sundays only (10am–10pm). A family atmosphere, ideal for group lunches.
An osteria with a large dining room and a veranda onto the garden, surrounded by the green of the hills. Traditional meat and fish cooking, run by a young and attentive team. Excellent for breakfast too: filled croissants and better-than-average cappuccino.
An old-town osteria specialising in game and the peasant cooking of the Tuscan tradition. Wild boar, roe deer, rabbit, snails, slow-cooked and grilled meats. An authentic atmosphere and dishes like your grandmother’s.
A small osteria looking onto the town’s main square. Tuscan home cooking and a family atmosphere, perfect for a quick lunch in the heart of Riparbella or a quiet summer dinner sitting out in the square.
A long-established restaurant on the road to Volterra, the classic stop for anyone coming from inland. Local Tuscan cooking, plenty of parking. A recommended stop for anyone following the Val di Cecina itinerary.
The restaurant of Borgo San Martino, inside a restored old hamlet with grounds, swimming pools and a spa. Tuscan cooking with local ingredients and signature dishes by chef Antonio Geri. Open to non-residents too, for lunch and dinner.
Book a tableThe restaurant of the Borgo Felciaione relais, at the top of the hill a kilometre from the town: you get there along a narrow road and the reward is the view over the Etruscan Coast from the poolside terrace. Traditional Tuscan dishes, a bar and service for visitors from outside as well.
Family cooking inside the San Pecoraio farm: the oil, wine, vegetables and cured meats are all their own. Pizza baked in a wood-fired oven and a panoramic terrace looking over the hills and the Tuscan Archipelago. Closed on Mondays; on Sundays open for lunch as well.
Book a tableThe restaurant of the Fonte alla Lepre resort: indoor rooms and poolside tables looking out over the countryside. Tuscan tradition with a modern touch, an à la carte menu at lunch and dinner, seasonal produce from the area and from the nearby sea. Open to outside visitors too.
A simple, straightforward farm stay in the quiet of the Mediterranean scrub west of the town. Local cooking, their own olive oil and cushions and corners made for watching the sunset with a glass in your hand. Lovely for family lunches and small events too.
The restaurant of the Tenuta Pakravan-Papi, with a terrace looking over forty kilometres of coastline : on clear days you can see Elba, Capraia and Corsica. In the kitchen is Francesca Papi, weaving Tuscan tradition together with international touches, alongside the estate’s IGT Costa Toscana wines. Few covers, so it is best to book.
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Looking onto Riparbella’s characteristic streets, the Enoteca Ripavino is the perfect meeting place for anyone who loves good wine, generous boards of local specialities and the typical atmosphere of Tuscan towns. It has a convivial soul, perfect for a long aperitivo or an informal evening with friends.
In a handy, easy-to-reach spot in Riparbella, the Jemsi Bar is far more than just a bar: it is the beating heart of the town’s social life. A modern, lively place with infectious energy, perfect at any time of day, from breakfast through to late at night.
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Right in the old town of Riparbella, Bar Da Libero is the very essence of the classic old-style “town bar”. Far from the logic of modern or touristy places, it is a long-standing and genuine meeting point, used by local people and loved by anyone looking for the truest Riparbella.
The town’s signature dish, entered in the De.Co. municipal register It is the recipe of the Sagra del Cinghiale, set down by the local cook “Pelo”: no marinade — so as not to mask the flavour of the meat — but onion, garlic, rosemary, bay, red wine and tomato purée. It is served with polenta, or in the version with black olives.
Bread dough fried to order and filled: the De.Co. version, dating from 2022, is the one with hand-cut Riparbella-style wild boar. At the festivals it also does the rounds with sausage and caramelised onions, mortadella and burrata or porchetta, and as a sweet in the form of the zonzellina. It grew out of the country tradition of fried breads.
The third De.Co. recipe: ribollita as it is made here. Seasonal vegetables — savoy cabbage, courgettes, carrots, potatoes — two kinds of bean, cannellini and borlotti, and stale home-made bread arranged in layers in the pan. The peasant cooking of the Riparbella countryside.
Around the town hunting is still a living tradition, and the cooking shows it: pappardelle and lasagne with wild boar ragù , wild boar in salmì, venison, roe deer, rabbit, snails, slow-cooked and grilled meats. Worth trying in the town’s osterias and in the one inside the woods of Il Giardino.
Riparbella is a town of olive groves and belongs to the Città dell’Olio association: Olio Toscano IGP is produced here, in a municipality that has declared itself GMO free. Taste it raw on fettunta or on pulses. In November, alongside the Sagra del Cinghiale, there is the Festival of New Olive Oil.
The municipality lies in the Montescudaio DOC area and many labels are released as IGT Costa Toscana, often from organic or biodynamic farming. Eight estates — Caiarossa, Duemani, La Regola, Colline Albelle, Pakravan-Papi, Prima Pietra, Urlari, La Cava — belong to the association of the Vignaioli delle Colline di Riparbella; the ninth is Quercialuce.
