Italy · Toscana · Cities of art
the city enclosed within its Walls, with the towers, the Romanesque churches and the Comics at the end of October
Lucca makes sense from the top of its Walls. They are four kilometres and two hundred metres of tree-lined bastions, built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for a siege that never came, and today they are the city's garden: people walk, run and cycle on them, and from up there you look down on the roofs. Inside, the plan is still the Roman one: via Fillungo follows the cardo, piazza San Michele stands on the forum, and piazza dell'Anfiteatro has the oval shape of the terraces on which the houses were built. In between are the Romanesque churches with marble facades of stacked loggias, the towers of the silk merchants, and the house where Puccini was born. We have been there three times, in December, during the Comics and for the feast of Santa Zita, and it is a city that changes a great deal with the season: empty and bright in winter, too full to get through at the end of October, in flower in April.
Sleeping
Three areas outside the Walls, all on the west side, a quarter of an hour on foot from the centre or a little more. We stopped at the motorhome car park on viale Luporini, during the 2022 Comics.
Viale Luporini 545, 55100 Lucca
it is the city's motorhome car park, run by Lucca Plus, open day and night with a barrier. It is a car park and not a campsite: no tables, awnings or levelling jacks outside. From here to Porta Sant'Anna it is ten minutes on foot. The prices are those of the operator's price list, read in October 2026
Via del Tiro a Segno 704, 55100 Lucca
it has a shuttle to the centre, electric bike hire and a paying swimming pool; animals are welcome. Prices are for a full twenty four hours, and when the area is full the pitch must be left by 14:00. In winter it closes for a few weeks for maintenance
Via del Tiro a Segno 659/c, 55100 Lucca
fenced and under video surveillance, with hot showers, a washing machine and a barbecue. Arrivals between 13:30 and 18:30
Getting around
Inside the Walls you go on foot or by bike. The motorhome stays outside, and from every area you walk into the city in a quarter of an hour.
Seeing
The places line up for a walk: you climb onto the Walls, enter the city by the cathedral and leave on the San Frediano side. The Botanical Garden sits in a corner, right against the bastion. Tap a marker on the map to open its entry below.
Walk · free entry · 43.84335, 10.51476
the circuit you see today is the city's third. Work began in 1513, the real building lasted from 1544 to 1650, and the Walls were never called on to defend Lucca from a siege. It was Maria Luisa di Borbone, in the nineteenth century, who turned them into a public tree-lined promenade. They are 4.2 kilometres long, with bastions each named after a saint, except the Bastion of Liberty, and six gates. Under some bastions you can go into the sally ports and the underground chambers: in Santa Croce there is a route on the history of the Walls, in San Regolo you enter with the Botanical Garden ticket. From the San Frediano bastion you look down into the garden of Palazzo Pfanner.
Church · paid entry · 43.84060, 10.50645
Piazza San Martino, 55100 Lucca
pope Alexander II consecrated it in 1070, and the asymmetrical facade, with its loggias leaning against the bell tower, dates from 1308. Inside there are two things people come for. The Volto Santo, the wooden crucifix that legend says was carved by Nicodemus, kept in Matteo Civitali's small temple of 1484: carbon 14 has dated it to between the late eighth and the early ninth century, and after its restoration it went back on view in September 2025. And the funeral monument of Ilaria del Carretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi who died at twenty-seven in 1405, carved by Jacopo della Quercia, with the little dog at her feet. The bell tower, some sixty metres high, has been open for climbing since 2016. In front, in piazza San Giovanni, the church of Santi Giovanni e Reparata has under its floor the excavations of the Roman city and of the first cathedral.
Church · free entry · 43.84317, 10.50291
Piazza San Michele, 55100 Lucca
it stands where the Roman forum was, and the name says so. It is recorded from 795 and was rebuilt from 1070. The facade is the most photographed thing in Lucca: four tiers of white marble loggias, each different from the next, rising higher than the church roof, and at the top the archangel Michael with wings of metal sheet. Inside there are a Madonna by Luca della Robbia and the panel of the Four Saints by Filippino Lippi. The bell tower can be visited for a fee from the end of September 2026. Puccini, as a boy, played the organ here.
Museum · paid entry · 43.84330, 10.50153
Corte San Lorenzo 9, 55100 Lucca
Puccini was born here on 22 December 1858 and lived here until 1880, when he left to study in Milan. It has been a museum since 1979, and inside is the 1901 Steinway on which he composed Turandot, together with the costume of the title role from the premiere at the Metropolitan. It stands in a courtyard a few steps from San Michele, where there is also the statue of the composer sitting down.
Walk · free entry · 43.84341, 10.50421
Via Fillungo 24, 55100 Lucca
the shopping street, seven hundred metres from the Canto d'Arco to piazza dell'Anfiteatro, on the line of the Roman cardo, with Art Nouveau signs above the shop windows. Halfway along is the church of San Cristoforo, where the old Lucchese measures of the braccio and the mezzobraccio are set into the wall. And there is the Torre delle Ore, the tallest in the city, with its first clock of 1390 and today's mechanism from the eighteenth century, which strikes the hours the Roman way, from one to six. Inside you climb a wooden staircase. Legend says that Lucida Mansi, who had sold her soul to the devil, climbed it on the night of 14 August 1623 to stop the bell before midnight. The seasonal opening hours are on the city council's ticket office.
Viewpoint · paid entry · 43.84371, 10.50701
Via Sant'Andrea 45, 55100 Lucca
the tower of the Guinigi family, the merchants who ruled the city in the fifteenth century, built in the second half of the fourteenth century and theirs until 1968. At the top, inside a walled planter, grow seven holm oaks, and it is the thing you recognise from all over the city. You climb 230 steps, and from the top there is the best view of Lucca: the oval of piazza dell'Anfiteatro, the bell towers, the green Walls all around and the mountains. Booking is recommended on weekdays and required at weekends and on public holidays, with staggered slots; during the Comics there is a separate ticket. It is not accessible to people who have difficulty walking. The seasonal opening hours are on the city council's ticket office.
Square · free entry · 43.84535, 10.50615
the Roman amphitheatre, from the first or second century, had fifty-five arches and room for ten thousand spectators. In the Middle Ages houses were built inside it, leaning on the terraces, and when in 1830 the architect Lorenzo Nottolini cleared the centre, the square kept the oval shape of the arena. The ancient level lies below, about three metres down. Until the early twentieth century it was the city market, and for the feast of Santa Zita it becomes one again, with flowers and sweets.
Church · paid entry · 43.84616, 10.50463
Piazza San Frediano, 55100 Lucca
it was founded in the sixth century by bishop Frediano, and the present church was rebuilt from 1112. On the facade, which you see from far away, is the great gilded mosaic of the Ascension, with Christ above and the apostles below, from the thirteenth century. Inside there is a twelfth century Romanesque baptismal font carved by three different masters, and there is the body of Santa Zita, the Lucchese servant who died in 1278, kept in a glass case under the altar of her chapel. The bell tower, fifty-five metres high, has been open for climbing since 2023. The facade faces east, so the light on the mosaic is the morning light.
Museum · paid entry · 43.84615, 10.50330
Via degli Asili 33, 55100 Lucca
a palace of 1641 built by a family of silk merchants, with an open-air staircase and an Italian garden from the early eighteenth century, with statues and a pool, which you can see from the top of the Walls even without going in. From 1846 Felix Pfanner, who had come from Austria, ran a brewery here, which stayed in business until 1929. The garden has been the set of films such as Il Marchese del Grillo and The Portrait of a Lady.
Park · paid entry · 43.84145, 10.51143
Via del Giardino Botanico 14, 55100 Lucca
two hectares against the Walls, opened in 1820 at the wish of Maria Luisa di Borbone. The cedar of Lebanon planted in 1822 by the first director, Paolo Volpi, is still there. Into the pond, legend says, went Lucida Mansi, the same as in the Torre delle Ore. With the ticket you also enter the underground chamber of the San Regolo bastion.
When
Lucca has a busy calendar, and two of its dates change the city so much that it is worth knowing before you set off: the Comics at the end of October and the Luminara on the evening of 13 September.
Next: Lucca Comics & Games · 28 Oct - 1 Nov
the comics and games festival, born in 1966 as the Salone internazionale dei Comics, which for five days takes over the Walls, the squares and the palaces of the centre with its pavilions, its cosplayers and more than two hundred thousand visitors. The ticket is for the pavilions, the city stays open to everyone. 2026 is the sixtieth edition, Legacy, from 28 October to 1 November, from 9 to 19. We happened to be there on 1 November 2022, and piazza San Michele looked as it does in the photograph. On those days the motorhome can only be parked by booking: see below, in the tips
the Christmas markets, Father Christmas's village and the ice rink in the squares of the centre
the feast of the Lucchese servant who died in 1278, patron saint of domestic workers. Her body is displayed in the middle of San Frediano, blessed daffodils are offered, and in piazza dell'Anfiteatro and piazza San Frediano there is the market fair of flowers and sweets. We were there on 25 April 2026, with the square full of azaleas
the gardening market fair on the Walls, on the San Regolo and Liberty bastions and at the Botanical Garden, with more than one hundred and seventy exhibitors. In 2026 it was held from 10 to 12 April
the season of big international concerts, running since 1998. In 2027, for its thirtieth year, the concerts are announced in the area of the Walls
the market fair of rare plants and gardening, the autumn sister of Verdemura, in the same places. In 2026 it was held from 4 to 6 September
the night procession that recalls the moving of the Volto Santo from San Frediano to the cathedral: the centre turns its lights off and lights up with thousands of small oil lamps on the facades, and the procession goes from San Frediano to the cathedral by way of via Fillungo and piazza San Michele. The next day is the feast of Santa Croce
Remember
Lucca · part two
and then?
What to taste, and where to go tomorrow.
The dish of Lucca is the tordello, a large ravioli filled with meat and dressed with meat sauce. And in the street you buy buccellato, the ring cake with raisins and aniseed: "whoever comes to Lucca and does not eat buccellato might as well never have been here".
Looking
25 shots from our visit. Tap one to see it large.