The hook
A Tuscan town that kept its complete Renaissance ramparts and then planted trees on top of them, so the defensive wall is now a four-kilometre elevated park you cycle around, looking down into the town on one side and out to the hills on the other.
01Why it's worth it
Lucca is the calm answer to Florence an hour away. The walls are genuinely unique in Italy at this scale and condition, wide, wooded, and used daily by locals running, cycling, and pushing prams, and they enclose a town of narrow lanes and towers that stayed an independent republic for centuries. Inside are an oval piazza built on the footprint of the Roman amphitheatre, its curved houses tracing the old arcade; a cathedral holding the Volto Santo crucifix; a tower with oak trees growing out of its roof you can climb; and Puccini's birthplace, with opera performed nightly in a small church. It's compact, unhurried, and full of Italians, which is why travellers who base here rather than in Florence tend to leave happier.
02How to experience it
Rent a bike immediately and ride the walls, more than once, at different times of day. Climb the Guinigi tower for the oaks and the rooftops, sit in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, and catch a Puccini recital in the evening. It works best as a base for day trips to Florence, Pisa, and the Garfagnana hills rather than as a day trip itself.
From the locals
It converts people who came for the famous cities: after four weeks across Italy, one traveller reported that "we only stayed in 4 cities and Lucca was our favorite," adding the regret that they had booked crowded Florence instead — "we should have chosen a quieter town and did a day trip." Italians list it too among the country's "relativamente sottovalutate" places.