Florence To Lucca: Tuscany At A Slower Pace

The walls that shape everything

Lucca's city walls, built mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries, were never seriously tested in battle and survived largely intact into the modern era, when most other Italian cities tore theirs down to allow for expansion. Today the top of the walls forms a wide, tree-lined promenade that circles the entire old town, used constantly by locals walking, cycling, and jogging.

Walking the full loop takes a bit over an hour and gives a clear sense of the city's compact scale in a way that's hard to get from inside the streets themselves. It's one of the more distinctive things a Tuscan city has to offer, and there's really no equivalent in Florence.

Piazza dell'Anfiteatro

Perhaps the clearest evidence of Lucca's Roman layer is Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, an oval piazza whose shape follows the footprint of a Roman amphitheater that once stood on the site. Medieval houses were built directly onto and into the old arena structure, and the result is a public square with a shape you don't find anywhere else, ringed by cafes and small shops.

It's a good example of how Lucca layers its history rather than erasing it: Roman bones, medieval infill, Renaissance walls around the outside, all still legible if you know what you're looking at.

The Guinigi tower

The Torre Guinigi, a medieval tower topped improbably with a small garden of holm oak trees growing at its summit, is Lucca's best-known landmark and worth the climb for the view over the terracotta rooftops and the walls beyond them.

Towers like this were once common across Tuscan cities as status symbols for wealthy families, and Lucca and San Gimignano are among the few places where you can still see them in real numbers, though Lucca's version is quieter and less visited than San Gimignano's.

What each city is good at

Florence carries an unmatched concentration of Renaissance art: the Uffizi, the Accademia, Brunelleschi's dome, a level of density that few cities anywhere can match.

Lucca carries a different kind of density, of layered history within a small, walkable, walled footprint, plus a musical heritage (it's Puccini's birthplace) and a food and wine culture tied closely to the surrounding countryside.

• Florence: Renaissance art and architecture, museums, scale of history
• Lucca: intact walls, walkable old center, Roman layout, quieter pace

Puccini's city

Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, and the city takes its connection to him seriously, with a house-museum and regular concerts of his music performed in local churches. It's a smaller-scale cultural offering than Florence's, but a genuine one, tied to a specific local figure rather than staged for visitors generically.

Getting there and around

Regional trains connect Florence Santa Maria Novella to Lucca in a bit over an hour and twenty minutes, with reasonably frequent departures through the day. Once inside the walls, the old town is compact enough to cover almost entirely on foot, and renting a bicycle for the wall-top promenade is a common and easy option.