Lucca: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Lucca stayed an independent republic for nearly five hundred years, until Napoleon, by being small, rich and careful. Between 1504 and 1645 it built a ring of brick walls so massive that no army ever tried them — and the only enemy they ever stopped was water. Today the top is a promenade lined with trees, four kilometres round. An hour and a half on foot, or forty minutes by bicycle, flat all the way.
A short history of Lucca
In 180 BC the Romans founded Lucca, and to this day one of the city's squares keeps the oval shape of the Roman amphitheatre on which it was built. In the Middle Ages the city grew rich from the silk trade and was an independent republic for centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries the walls were built, four kilometres of ramparts that were never fought over, and today they carry a tree-lined avenue. In 1805 Napoleon gave the city to his sister Elisa. In 1858 the composer Giacomo Puccini was born here.
The ten best sights in Lucca
1The WallsFour kilometres of tree-lined promenade on top; rent a bike and ride round
2Piazza dell’AnfiteatroAn oval square that is the shape of the Roman arena under it
3Torre GuinigiA tower with oak trees growing on the top
4San Martino CathedralA labyrinth carved in the porch, and a tomb carved for a young wife
5San Michele in ForoA façade taller than the church behind it, with the archangel on top
6San FredianoA gold mosaic on the front, and a saint’s body inside
7Puccini MuseumThe house where Puccini was born, with his piano
8Palazzo PfannerA baroque garden of statues behind a palace, seen from the walls too
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9Piazza Napoleone
The big square Elisa Bonaparte cleared; summer concerts
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10Porta San Pietro
The southern gate from the station, with the word LIBERTAS over it
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Lucca →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Lucca:
Free walking tours in Lucca
Walls that never saw a war
Lucca stayed an independent republic for nearly five hundred years, until Napoleon, by being small, rich and careful. Between 1504 and 1645 it built a ring of brick walls so massive that no army ever tried them — and the only enemy they ever stopped was water. Today the top is a promenade lined with trees, four kilometres round. An hour and a half on foot, or forty minutes by bicycle, flat all the way.
- Porta San Pietro · The gate from the station, and over it the single word that was the republic’s motto: LIBERTAS. Lucca kept its freedom not by fighting but by paying, bargaining and staying out of other people’s wars, and the walls were built to make anyone think twice.
- The Walls · Twelve metres high and thirty wide at the base, with eleven bastions. They never fought a siege. In 1812 the river Serchio flooded, and the townspeople shut and sealed the gates; the water rose against the walls and the town inside stayed dry. Marie Louise of Bourbon planted the trees on top in the 1820s.
- Botanical Garden · Set against the inside of the eastern wall, with a pond and great old trees. From the rampart above you look down into it, and into the private gardens of the palaces that line the wall all the way round.
- Villa Guinigi · The Guinigi were merchant bankers who ruled Lucca in the early fifteenth century, and this was their villa just inside the walls. It is now the national museum of the town’s art and archaeology, and on most days you will be almost alone in it.
- Porta Santa Maria · The northern gate, facing the hills and the river that once threatened the town. The gates were the only way through the walls, and until the nineteenth century they were closed at night.
- Palazzo Pfanner · From the north-west stretch of the wall you look straight down into a baroque garden of statues, lemon trees and a fountain. The palace was bought in the nineteenth century by an Austrian brewer named Pfanner, who opened one of the first breweries in Italy in its grounds.
A town built on a town
The street plan of Lucca is still Roman: the grid of the colony shows through the medieval lanes, and the shape of the arena is preserved as a square. Inside the walls the town packed in so many churches that it was called the city of a hundred churches, and on top of it all its rich families built towers. Two hours, flat, and the churches close at lunch.
- San Michele in Foro · The church stands on the site of the Roman forum, as its name says. Its façade of tiers of little columns rises far above the roof of the church behind it — the town planned to raise the nave to match, ran out of money, and left a front that is mostly a screen of sky. The archangel on top is four metres tall.
- Puccini Museum · Giacomo Puccini was born in this house in 1858, the fifth generation of a family of church musicians in Lucca. The piano he composed Turandot on is here. Every evening a church in town puts on a concert of his music, and has done for years.
- San Martino Cathedral · On a pillar of the porch a small labyrinth is carved, with a Latin line saying that this is the maze Daedalus built; pilgrims traced it with a finger. Inside, Jacopo della Quercia carved the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in 1406, a young wife of the town’s ruler who died at twenty-six, with her dog at her feet.
- Torre Guinigi · Lucca once had well over a hundred towers, built by families who competed in height. This one belonged to the Guinigi, and on its top they planted holm oaks in a garden, which are still growing there, forty metres above the street. About two hundred and thirty steps up.
- Piazza dell’Anfiteatro · The Roman amphitheatre was quarried and built over through the Middle Ages, until its ring was a ring of houses with the arena full of shacks. In the 1830s the architect Lorenzo Nottolini cleared the middle, and what was left is an oval square whose outline is the arena itself.
- San Frediano · A huge gold mosaic of Christ ascending covers the top of the façade, unusual for Tuscany. Inside lies the body of Saint Zita, a servant girl of Lucca who died in 1272 and is the patron saint of domestic workers; she has been on display in a glass case for centuries.
The villas and the valley
The merchant families of Lucca spent their summers in villas on the hills north-east of town, and the gardens they made are among the finest in Italy. Beyond them the Serchio valley climbs into the Garfagnana mountains — a medieval bridge the devil is said to have built, a spa the English poets loved, a town that emigrated to Scotland. A full day and a car.
- Villa Reale di Marlia · Napoleon made his sister Elisa princess of Lucca in 1805, and she took this villa as her summer palace. Its gardens include a green theatre whose stage, wings and prompter’s box are all cut from clipped hedges; the violinist Paganini, her court musician, is said to have played in it.
- Villa Torrigiani · A villa with a painted rococo front and, below the main garden, a sunken Garden of Flora full of hidden water jets. The owners used to switch them on to soak guests who did not know where to stand, and some of the jets still work.
- Devil’s Bridge · A medieval bridge over the Serchio with one great arch so steep it is almost a triangle. The legend is that the builder could not finish it and made a deal with the devil, who would get the first soul to cross; the townspeople sent a dog.
- Bagni di Lucca · A spa town in the woods where Shelley, Byron and the Brownings came for the hot springs and the cool summers in the nineteenth century. It had one of the first licensed casinos in Europe, and the English built themselves a church and a cemetery that are still here.
- Barga · A walled hill town over the valley, and from the late nineteenth century so many of its people emigrated to Scotland, to Glasgow above all, that it is called the most Scottish town in Italy. There is a fish-and-chip festival every summer, and half the town has relatives in Scotland.
- Lago di Vagli · When this valley was dammed in 1947, the medieval village of Fabbriche di Careggine went under the water. Every few years the reservoir is drained for maintenance, and the village — church, bridge, houses — rises out of the mud for a few months, and people come from all over Italy to walk in it.
Getting to Lucca and getting around
- Pisa Airport · Half an hour away; trains to Lucca run every hour via Pisa
- Lucca Station · Just outside the southern wall; walk in through Porta San Pietro
Cheap eats in Lucca
Lucca’s sweet is the buccellato, a ring of bread with aniseed and raisins, and the saying goes that whoever comes to Lucca without eating it has not been here. The savoury counter food is cecina — a thin baked pancake of chickpea flour, cut from a huge copper tray, a couple of euro a slice — and from the mountains, necci, chestnut-flour crepes folded round fresh ricotta.
- Taddeucci · Buccellato by the slice or the ring, since 1881
- Via Fillungo · Cecina hot from the oven in the lanes off the main street
- Piazza dell’Anfiteatro · An aperitivo in the oval, a few euro with snacks
- Castelnuovo di Garfagnana · Necci and the spelt of the mountains on market day
- Montecarlo · Wine by the glass in a walled village
- Viareggio · Fried fish in a paper cone along the seafront
Museums in Lucca
Lucca is a town of one composer and many palaces. Puccini’s house is the obvious museum; the less obvious ones are the merchants’ palaces, which show how a small republic grew rich on silk and banking and spent the money at home.
- Puccini Museum · His birthplace, his piano, and costumes from the operas
- Villa Puccini, Torre del Lago · His house on the lake, his grave, and summer opera beside it
- Palazzo Mansi · A gilded bridal chamber and a picture gallery
- Villa Guinigi · The town’s art and archaeology, almost empty
- Palazzo Pfanner · The garden of statues and the old brewery
- Pietrasanta · Marble studios you can walk into
Nature and day trips near Lucca
North of Lucca the Serchio valley climbs into the Garfagnana, chestnut forests and limestone mountains with caves in them, and further west the Apuan Alps, white with marble quarries. To the west the coast is long sand, and behind it a reed lake.
- The Walls · Four kilometres of trees; the town’s park
- Grotta del Vento · A cave that breathes; tours of one to three hours
- Lago di Vagli · The reservoir over the drowned village
- Lake Massaciuccoli · Boats through the reeds, and birds
- Devil’s Bridge · The steep arch over the river
- Botanical Garden · A quiet garden against the walls
Things to do in Lucca with kids
Lucca is one of the easiest towns in Italy with children: flat, closed to most traffic, and with a four-kilometre bicycle ring around it. The Pinocchio park is twenty minutes away, and a tower with trees growing on top is a story in itself.
- The Walls · Rent bikes and ride the ring; tandems too
- Collodi · The Pinocchio park and maze
- Torre Guinigi · Trees on top of a tower
- Grotta del Vento · The short tour suits children
- Viareggio · Sand beaches, and the carnival in February
- Villa Torrigiani · The garden of water jokes
Holy places in Lucca
Lucca was called the city of a hundred churches, and it is close to the truth. Its relic is the Volto Santo, a wooden crucifix that the legend says sailed to Italy on a boat with no crew and was brought here by an ox cart that no one drove.
- San Martino Cathedral · The Volto Santo, and the tomb of Ilaria
- San Michele in Foro · The façade that outgrew its church
- San Frediano · Saint Zita in her glass case
- Bagni di Lucca · The English church and cemetery of the poets’ era
- Barga · A Romanesque cathedral at the top of the town
Nightlife in Lucca
Lucca is a quiet town in the evening, but it has two big moments: the Summer Festival, with big-name concerts in Piazza Napoleone in July, and Lucca Comics & Games around the start of November, when the whole walled town fills with costumes. The coast at Viareggio is the nightlife the rest of the year.
- Piazza Napoleone · The Summer Festival concerts, July
- Piazza dell’Anfiteatro · Bars round the oval after dark
- San Michele in Foro · The evening Puccini concerts in the churches
- The Walls · The evening walk; the town does it at dusk
- Viareggio · Beach clubs and the seafront in summer
Frequently asked questions about Lucca
What is there to see in Lucca?
The top sights in Lucca are The Walls, Piazza dell’Anfiteatro and Torre Guinigi. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Lucca?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Lucca without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Lucca?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Lucca, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Walls that never saw a war.
How do you get to Lucca and get around?
The main ways are Pisa Airport and Lucca Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Lucca, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Lucca that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Lucca for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.