Lucca

Lucca is one of the main cities of art in Italy, famous particularly for its perfectly intact city wall built in the XV-XVII century. With a perimeter of approximately 4.45 km around the historical city centre, Lucca is one of the 4 main cities in Italy to keep its circular wall intact, together with Ferrara, Grosseto, Bergamo. The circular wall was transformed at the beginning of the second half of the 18th century into a pleasant pedestrian walk, resulting today in one of the best conserved in Europe, in so far as it was never actually used for defence purposes.  

Consequently, the historical centre of the city also remained intact almost in its original aspect, and is therefore able to demonstrate various architectures of merit, such as the numerous medieval churches of remarkable architectural richness (Lucca has even been nicknamed the "city of 100 churches”, due to the number of churches in its historical centre), towers and bell towers, and palatial Renaissance palaces of remarkable linear design.

The city also boasts evocative city spaces: the most famous being Piazza dell’Anfiteatro which was built on the ruins of an ancient roman amphitheatre by the work of architect Lorenzo Nottolini and is unique to his style of architecture. 

The main artery of the historical centre is the narrow and medieval street Via Fillungo, where the majority of shops and retailers can be found. Other evocative public squares include Piazza San Michele, the historical heart of the city and Piazza San Martino, the religious backbone where the famous Duomo di San Martino stands.

Due to its immense historical and palatial richness, there has been a recent move to propose the historical centre of Lucca (which also includes historical theatre Teatro del Giglio) in the world heritage list of UNESCO.