Lucca

Lucca is barely a kilometer long and wide, largely traffic-free and after good Italian habit packed with stately homes, beautiful palaces and piazzas full of terraces!

There are 90,000 Lucchesi of which only 10 percent live within the city walls. Just like in San Gimignano wealthy merchants and bankers erected slender towers to show how well off they were. Of an original total of 130 towers today remains only one: the Torre Guinigi from the year 1450. Each visitor of Lucca is automatically drawn to Piazza San Michele and its church, but the most beautiful part of Lucca is the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro. The arcades and high waist-century houses around the oval plaza with their distinctive green shutters are the most idyllic spot.

A nice part of Lucca are the 16th-century ramparts, where the Lucchesi and tourists can walk, jog or cycle around the city under rows of plane trees.