25/01/18
The city of Lucca was our first stop in Tuscany, founded by the Etruscans and with an abundance of renaissance buildings, it looked like a pleasant place to start a short tour around Tuscany.
Lucca old town is surrounded by intact city walls. After walking around the Roman walls in Lugo we fancied repeating the exercise here in Lucca. The walls here aren’t as old as Lugo’s walls, and their character is completely different but they share one thing in common; they are fully intact and encircle the old city, the ‘centro storico’.
There is a sosta situated outside the old city where there were a couple of other motorhomes. It’s got a barrier on entry where you pick up a ticket and you pay before you leave. At 10 euros for 24 hours it seemed reasonable value, especially when compared with the previous night’s parking. When we read reviews of the sosta there had been warnings of thefts so we double checked the precautions we take when leaving Bertie unguarded. It’s very easy for us to get complacent with our security measures and let them slacken off so it was a good exercise to check them. Making sure that valuables are in the safe, using our deadlocks and double locks on all the doors, ensuring windows are properly closed, putting the steering lock on, hiding our electronic equipment (the stuff that doesn’t fit in the safe) and making sure that our money, cards and phones are on us at all times and not just left hanging around. We don’t have much that would be of value to a thief, but the distress and inconvenience of theft shouldn’t be underestimated. So far we haven’t experienced it ourselves and we want to do everything we can to avoid the hassle and heartache.
Fortunately all was well and Bertie was untouched when we returned from our perambulations around the city walls. They are so wide and spacious, with grassy parks and trees lining the paths and cycle tracks, it is unnerving when you remember you are top of a man made structure. They are just over 4km around and as we walked we were lapped a couple of times by runners out for their lunchtime jog. I had wondered how people managed to cycle around the walls but there were long ramps providing easy access to the walkways.
We didn’t do much in Lucca apart from wander around the walls and then meander through the city. We saw churches with their beautiful marble facades, one that seemed to have tried a marble of every hue in it’s columned facade. There were towers, including the Guigni Tower which stands out because of it’s rooftop oak trees. The streets and piazzas, including the oval Piazza Anfiteatro which was built on the site of the Roman amphitheatre, were cobbled and lined with beautiful buildings, mainly traffic free they were ideal for a bit of aimless exploration.
On the way to Lucca we drove past many unfinished blocks of marble, no wonder there are so many marble clad buildings here
The broad and grassy walls of Lucca
We spotted this gorilla, not sure what it’s significance was
San Martino Cathedral
Palazzo Pfanner with the Basilica di San Frediano in the background.
The Palazzo Pfanner, the palazzo is closed to visitors between November and April, but you can see the extent of the buildings and the beautiful gardens from the city walls.
One of the many squares in Lucca, the streets and squares are a joy to wander around