Travel in Lucca essential guide to visiting Lucca. Lucca has many attractions for the tourist, including intact ramparts you can walk around Lucca is the only town in Italy entirely surrounded by walls. Lucca: A wealthy and colorful town A Jewel of a Tuscan Town Lucca The first thing you will see arriving in Lucca are the town walls which are very well preserved and still today surround all the old town. Useful Lucca travel links, all about culture, history, traditions, hotels, bed and breakfast guide for your holidays in Tuscany with accommodations, events, monuments, museums, itineraries, restaurants, sport, shopping. Shopping in Lucca, Italy: Where to shop, what to buy.
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Getting to and from Lucca
Lucca's train station is two blocks outside the ramparts (enter at Porta San Pietro) on the south side of town in Piazza Ricasoli. Lucca is on the Florence-Viareggio train line, with frequent service to Florence. It takes 70 minutes to an hour and a half to go from Lucca to Florence. Here's a map of Lucca showing the train station, a suggested walking route, and the major attractions. Buses run daily to Florence and Pisa as well, and leave from Piazza Verdi, adjacent to the tourist office. Lucca is on the A11 Autostrada between Viareggio and Florence.
Lucca from Above: Guinigi Tower
Casa Guinigi was the fifteenth-century home of Lucca's leading family. Like rich folks of the period, they built a tower. This one, however, is unique for the oaks that grow from it (and down into the room below). You can climb up and get wonderful views of Lucca in all directions. Check your camera battery before you go--it's 230 steps back down.. Our Lucca Photo Gallery has pictures from Guinigi Tower.
Lucca and Giacomo Puccini
Lucca was the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini (in 1858), one of Italy's most famous operatic composers. Today you can visit his birth house, which is now a museum, at Corte S. Lorenzo, 9 (via di Poggio) in Piazza della Cittadella, featuring a bronze statue of Puccini in the center. Entrance fee is 3 Euros. The Puccini Festival, held in an open-air theater in nearby Torre del Lago, allows opera lovers to feel the inspiration of the surroundings Puccini chose to live in. The theater opens out directly to a view of Lake Massaciuccoli with the Apuan Alps in the background. The Puccini festival is held May-August. See the official Puccini Festival web site for more. If you go, take some good mosquito repellant.
Lucca's Ramparts - The Medieval Walls
Lucca is surrounded entirely by 16th century walls. In the 19th century, trees were planted and now the ramparts can be walked or cycled. It's approximately three miles around the oval. Bicycles can be rented; the top is paved.
Lucca's Restaurants
Lucca offers up some pretty fine Tuscan cuisine. The restaurant most talked about is Ristorante Buca di Sant'Antonio. Have some farro soup, one of the oldest dishes in Italy and a favorite of Giacomo Puccini and Ezra Pound, according to the Restaurant's web site. For an informal and inexpensive meal, we like Trattoria da Leo. http://www.trattoriadaleo.it
The Villas of Lucca
you can take in the Villas of Lucca, a string of grand villas and their formal gardens located to the north of Lucca open to the public. If you do the whole tour, you'll end up in Collodi, where you can visit Collodi, the birthplace of Pinocchio, where you can visit the Pinocchio Park, great for the kids.
Lucca Churches
The Romanesque Duomo di San Martino, completely rebuilt between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, contains the Volto Santo (Holy Face), a wooden figure of Christ. The Volto Santo is believed to be the face of Christ, carved by Nicodemus who was present at the crucifixion.
The facade of San Michele in Foro found in Piazza San Michele is probably the most photographed in Lucca. If it looks tacked on, it's because they spent all the money on it, and didn't have enough left to raise the church as high as the facade. The columns in the facade are all different, and the archangel crowning the church features retractable wings to survive high winds. Puccini sang in the choir here. Open daily 7:40-noon and 3-6.
Lucca Weather and Climate
I've never sweltered inside Lucca's walls; there's always shaded alleyways to duck into on a hot summer day. For the historical climate and current weather, see Lucca Travel Weather
Nearby Lucca
The town of Barga, north of Lucca on the edge of the Garfagnana region and the Apuane Alps (Alpi Apuane), is considered one of the most beautiful medieval walled cities in Tuscany, yet it's only lightly touristed.
Pietrasanta a medieval town near the coast and sitting upon the foothills of the Apuan Alps, is the place Michelangelo came for the best stone. It's still an important center for working Marble, and you'll find many artisans at work here.
The amphitheatre, where gladiatorial shows and games were traditionally held, was built in Lucca in the second half of the Ist century A.D.. The discovery, during the demolition of some walls, of which we have news in the 19th century, of coins belonging to the reign of Emperor Claudius, suggests that work on the building was begun after the middle of the century. However, the it certainly wasn«t finished before the late Flavian Age, when funds were granted by an important citizen, Quintus Vibius, whose rank was that of an «eques« or knight and who, according to an inscription in his honour, found inside the arena in 1810, donated 100.000 sestertii in ten years. Progressively, the original function of the building was lost; with its proportions and position outside the town walls it became a threat to the town itself, as it risked falling into the hands of eventual enemies. It is likely that, from the VIth century A.D., during the Gothic wars and the siege of Narsetes, the amphitheatre was fortified for military purposes and its outer arches closed. Successively, other buildings, used as houses and, for a certain period, even as prisons, were added to the structures that had survived abandon and plunder. Between 1830 and 1839, following a project by the architect Lorenzo Nottolini, the buildings occupying the ancient arena were pulled down and the inner area, its profile slightly adjusted, became the present day piazza.
The remains of the Roman amphitheatre are preserved, incorporated in buildings bordering the present day Piazza dell« Anfiteatro, in the northern part of the town. The elliptic shape of the piazza corresponding, to a great extent, to the area of the ancient arena, is the result of a 19th century restoration that permits us to appreciate the volume and the general outline of the ancient monument. Besides, on the outer perimeter, along the present day Via dell« Anfiteatro, we can see some of the original walls, in particular in front of Piazza Scalpellini and to the north, between the eastern gate, the only ancient one that remains and Via del Portico.
Like the whole Tuscany, Lucca boasts marvellous churches. The church of San Francesco is in the east side of the town outside the XII century walls. The very simple building consists of a vast hall with brick walls; the roof, supported by trusses, ends with three chapels that have groined vaults. The entrance on the faŤadea">adea"> is a large portal with above it a lunette and a rose window. In the late Middle Ages the structure of the church remained basically unchanged: only some cloisters and small chapels were added. The cathedral of San Martino in Lucca was built in the south-eastern corner of the Roman town. The faŤade is linked, through the bell tower, to the old building of the 'Opera del Duomo' and other parts of the cloister; along the south side are the sacristy and rectory; the apse portion was originally connected to the archbishop's residence through a series of buildings and gardens that were pulled down to make place for piazzale Arrigoni, the present day square. Next to it there is the important Museum of the Cathedral is housed in a complex consisting of a XIIIth century tower house, a XVIth century church and a XIVth century main building.
The church of San Michele in Foro of Lucca is ideally as well as physically in the heart of the ancient Roman town. It is a basilica with three aisles, transept and semicircular apse; the nave is supported by arches resting upon monolithic pillars and the whole building is covered by barrel vaults with lunettes. The bell tower is above the southern transept. The outside of the church is distinguished by a high ribbed and richly sculpted faŤade; the walls are mainly of perfectly squared limestone blocks. The church of SS. Giovanni and Reparata of Lucca is in the southern part of the ancient Roman town. It is a basilica with three aisles and a transept, covered by a wooden ceiling. Large part of the interior is covered with plaster and painted to imitate stone. The falcade is in white limestone, while the rest of the building consists mainly of sandstone or brickwork. The transept, almost entirely made of bricks, communicates directly with the large baptistery; the latter has a square plan. The area occupied by church and baptistery has been recently object of an excavation campaign that has brought to light remains of early Christian buildings, the site can now be visited.
The Giacomo Puccini House Museum that belongs to the Puccini Foundation, established in 1973, is in the house where Giacomo Puccini, the last of a family of musicians that dominated the musical scene in Lucca, was born. The Puccini family had moved from Celle to Lucca in the first half of the XVIIIth century. In this house, situated at Corte San Lorenzo, Giacomo Puccini was born on the 22nd December 1858. Orphan of father, he spent here the years of his childhood and early youth before moving to Milan in order to continue his studies. However, he remembered the house where he was born all his life and it was his will that it should remain property of the family. Once he reached fame and success Puccini lived in Milan, Torre del Lago , Boscolungo, Chiatri, Torre della Tagliata (Orbetello) and Viareggio where the main Puccini houses can be found (together with the house of his ancestors in "Celle dei Puccini"). The house where he was born is certainly the first one to see: a visit of the place where Giacomo grew up will help you to become familiar and learn more about this great figure of classical music. He is the author, among other masterpieces, of the La Boheme.
Lucca's medieval and Renaissance features are enclosed in its thick sixteenth century walls, a characteristic of this beautiful Tuscan town on the left of the river Serchio. The circle of walls has eleven bastions of different shapes and dimensions. Both the so called Torrione del Bastardo and the San Martino bastion have preserved their original XVIth century structure. In particular inside the latter, open to visitors, we can examine in detail of one of these impressive constructions and see how the gunports used to be arranged.
The San Paolino bastion, completely restored and open to visitors, proposes an unusual and winning solution for the reclamation and usage of large underground spaces. The town was a free commune since the XIIth century and Porta San Pietro, the oldest (1565-1566) of its three original gates, was the only one through which foreigners were allowed to pass. Though in part modified in the course of the centuries, it still preserves substantially unchanged the look of its elegant facade.
The Sorroundings of Lucca boast an unique "Villas Landscape". The Villas, or rather the palaces in villa, are historical country residences that the Lucchesi merchants built between the 15th and 19th centuries, investing the fruits of their business and banking activities in central Europe. More than three hundred Villas, large and small, are spread out over the arc of hills that both defines and brings to a close the geographical bounds of the Plain of Lucca. Among them: Villa Reale di Marlia, Villa Grabau, Villa Bernardini, Villa Oliva, Villa Mansi,Villa di Carmigliano.
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