Ponte nelle Alpi

12/5 Lucca – city walking tour and walking the walls
The rain eased and we got back through the walls, grabbed a couple of rolls and took them back to our room – you have to look hard for these small cafes, very little advertising allowed and for historical reasons sometimes people have to keep the original business names above the doors, we had a clothes shop pointed out to us later on that had a very old ‘Farmacia’ sign above it, formerly a pharmacy.

The meeting point for the tour was a few minutes walk away, in fact anything in Lucca is only a few minutes from anywhere within the walls, you just need the GPS on your phone to take you there. The guide, Chiara, was very good, she did the tour in both Italian and English and we got all sorts of information. Lucca was settled in pre-Roman times with the original Roman city only just visible in the centre of the town, there’s a later medieval ‘tall thin brick’ wall which was deemed to be pretty useless for defence, and then in the 1500s the current wall was built though it was never used for defence against anyone.

Close to the meeting point is a large building which was used by Napoleon’s sister, Elisa Bonaparte, as stables for her horses. She was the ruler of Lucca in Napoleon’s time and was responsible for some of the gardens around the city. Lucca has a population of about 10,000 within the walls, and about 85,000 in the greater area. It’s known as the city of 100 churches and 100 towers, some of the churches are very ornate and obvious, others are just a door in a wall but there are treasures inside.

We stopped to look at a statue with water taps beneath, the city has very pure water and while we were standing there several people came and went to fill their water bottles (as we did ourselves later). Water is very important in Lucca as it’s used in papermaking, a big industry here. We saw a church nearby with a beautiful mosaic on the outside dedicated to St Frediano who was Irish, made Bishop of Lucca and in the 6th century miraculously diverted the river from the middle of town to outside, stopping the frequent flooding. In actual fact he was some kind of engineer who had also been in Florence and a couple of other places at a time known for water works so probably designed some kind of deviation – but whatever, it was a miracle and Irish Freddie is a saint.

A nearby street was called ‘Vicola Della Felicita’, something like ‘happy street’ – because it was the red light district in days gone by. And then we saw the tower with trees growing on top, you can climb up 200+ steps if you like, but we passed on that.

The big surprise was the 2nd century amphitheatre in the middle of town, and indeed when you stand outside one particular spot you can see the remains of a Roman gate if you look hard, then look again and realise that the walls you’ve walked past are curved – see the photo. I’ve cribbed an aerial photo and it’s a round ‘square’ inside, very popular cafes and restaurants, festival venue etc.

Had to laugh at one point when we stopped to look at a statue of Lucca’s favourite son, Giacomo Puccini and realised it was right outside the restaurant where we’d eaten the night before so we were quite close to ‘home’.

We didn’t think the town was very crowded at all, easy to walk around without being jostled, just the odd obvious tour group, and I said to Chiara that I supposed the alleys would be very crowded in the high season. She just laughed and said this is the high season and it doesn’t get very crowded at all which surprised me, she said nothing like some of the other cities where you can hardly move.

It was a good tour, finished at the cathedral so we rushed across the city back to the same place we’d started, ready for the 4.30 ‘walking the walls’ tour.

We met up with guide Lucia and a smaller group of three Italians, two young Aussies, a Canadian woman and ourselves and she did the tour in two languages. Unfortunately the three Italians talked fairly loudly amongst themselves during the English explanations, and two of them chatted a bit during the Italian ones too, a bit frustrating, and I said to them at one point ‘Excuse me, I can’t hear’ but it didn’t make a lot of difference. A pity, but for all that it was another good tour.

There are six gates now open for traffic and ten small fortresses, three of the four main forts have been open to the public since 2015 after a very big restoration, they seem to be open to anyone at all times, no obvious gates, there’s good lighting in most of it and the floors are mostly even. The walls are not totally hollow, just the fort-like structures and we could see the holes for cannons, storage areas for gunpowder etc. The gates had drawbridges During WW2 these areas were used as shelters by the local population.

So we went in and out of these three tunnel complexes, all much the same in design and several other people came and went walking or on bikes, even on one of the pedal cars you see around the town (that was four crazy teenagers). One had three camel-like statues inside the entrance which was an art installation, another had red and white streamers and wooden beams which was some kind of heavenly constellation image. Hmmm. The tunnels are popular with metal detectorists who have found many things from all ages including Roman coins, brooches, small bracelets, and going through to wartime items.

On the outside of the walls we could see the other side of the cannon emplacements, and noticed then that some of the towers had rounded edges, some square – one was thought to be less vulnerable than the other to enemy fire so they changed to the other design, and I can’t remember which came first.

We walked on top of the walls for the most part, very flat, tarsealed, a brick wall waist-high on the outer edge, grass on each side of the path, and quite busy with tourists and their maps, a couple of small tour groups, lots of obvious locals walking for their health, kids and parents on bikes, it’s a real asset to the city and very well used.

One part we saw the local prison, quite a solid building that used to be a big convent – no nuns were going to escape, and certainly no prisoners these days. Lucia told us of one famous prisoner in the 1950’s, an American musician who had been caught with drugs and was sentenced to nine months in Lucca, and while there he used to put on concerts.

I’ve put in a photo of beautiful gardens belonging to Palazzo Pfanner, not a very Italian name but it belonged to a German family of brewers who made beer here for a couple of hundred years, their home is now open to the public along with the gardens. We’d hoped to visit them in the morning but rain stopped that happening.

Lucia said that the walls are a very important part of every Lucca resident’s life, and grandparents tell stories about the factories by the walls where women made cigars and were able to leave their children in company nurseries or care, they were very lucky for their time, her mother included. Further back there were stories of a network of canals that came right up to the walls and offloaded bricks, stone and other materials for building the town and walls, not existing now other than a small creek running along part of the walls.

She also said that one big green area in particular is used for open air concerts, she said it was pretty exciting seeing the Rolling Stones six or seven years ago (she was right at the back, Mick Jagger was barely visible), lots of other performers have been there too. I noticed a poster for Robbie Williams coming in a few weeks, not sure inside or outside the walls.

So again, a walk back home and my legs were pretty tired, not a pretty sight hauling myself up the two flights of steep steps to the door. We went back to the same restaurant for dinner, a different menu and not so quiet with a tour group of 14 or 15 Aussies on some kind of trek and one lone NZ doctor amongst them, quite interesting earwigging on their conversation and they realised we were from NZ so there was a bit of chipping about the Bledisloe Cup.

And off to bed ready for the tour to Cinque Terre on Saturday.Read more