Lucca
Mura Urbane Di Lucca, A Complete Renaissance Defensive Circuit Maintained By The Comune Di Lucca As A Public Urban Park · Lucca, Tuscany
Most Italian cities tore their walls down. Lucca turned its into a park. A complete Renaissance circuit of about four kilometres, eleven bastions, thirty metres thick at the base, was planted with trees in the early nineteenth century and handed to the public, and it is now a tree-shaded promenade that people walk, run and cycle for free at any hour with no gate and no ticket. Inside it sits a city that has never needed to shout: an oval piazza built into the footprint of the Roman amphitheatre, a cathedral holding a wooden Christ that carbon dating recently pushed back three hundred years, a tower with holm oaks growing out of the roof, and the house where Puccini was born. It is the calmest of the big Tuscan towns for fifty-one weeks of the year, and for the other one it hosts one of the largest comics festivals on earth and becomes completely impassable. Check the festival dates before you book anything, because for the rest of the year the walls are yours at whatever hour you feel like walking them.
Piazza San Martino, Lucca, Tuscany, 55100, Italy
The walls are free and open at all hours with no gate. Cathedral of San Martino Monday to Saturday 10:00-18:00 and Sunday from 12:00; the bell tower, cathedral museum and SS Giovanni e Reparata daily 10:00-18:00, last admission 30 minutes before closing. Torre Guinigi and the Torre delle Ore keep seasonal hours that the comune publishes only for January and February, with booking mandatory at weekends and on public holidays. Puccini's birthplace daily 09:30-19:00 from April to September, and shorter hours with Tuesday closing the rest of the year. Lucca Comics and Games ran 28 October to 1 November in 2026.