Lucca is the Tuscan city that does not make you climb. Siena is built on three ridges, San Gimignano on a hill, Volterra on a cliff, and Lucca sits flat on the plain of the Serchio inside a complete circuit of Renaissance walls. Those walls are the point: built between 1504 and 1648, never attacked, and converted in the nineteenth century into a tree lined park on top, four kilometres around and wide enough for two lanes of cyclists and a row of plane trees.
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That single fact changes how you pack. Almost everyone hires a bicycle here, the hire shops sit just inside the gates, and the flat centre plus the wall circuit make it the most cyclable historic city in Italy. It is also the birthplace of Puccini, which fills the city with music in summer, and it is forty minutes from Pisa and eighty from Florence, which makes it a better base than either for a region most people rush.
What Makes Lucca Different to Pack For
Inland Tuscan seasons, slightly damper
Lucca sits on a plain a short distance from the coast, so it is milder than Siena and wetter than Florence. Summer runs 28°C to 33°C and humid. Winter runs 2°C to 11°C, damp with fog off the plain. Autumn is the wettest season and spring the most changeable.
A merino wool base layer for women covers November through March under a coat, and a packable rain jacket earns its place from October to April, particularly if you are on a bicycle where an umbrella is no use at all.
You will be cycling, so dress for it
Not in cycling kit, since nobody here does that, but in something you can ride in: the bikes are upright town bicycles with baskets, the wall is flat, and Italians ride it in ordinary clothes. A skirt is workable on a step through frame; a long flowing one is not.
Cobbles, but gentle ones
The centre is paved in stone and the surface is uneven, though without the gradient that makes Siena punishing. Flat grippy shoes handle everything, and the wall path on top is gravel and packed earth.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Lucca Packing List
Footwear
Flat, grippy, comfortable and fine on a pedal. The two tower climbs are the only demanding thing underfoot, and both are stairs rather than terrain. Nothing here needs boots unless you are heading into the Garfagnana or the Apuan Alps north of the city, where waterproof hiking shoes are the right call on marble quarry tracks and mountain paths.
Clothing
Layers rather than anything heavy. Two merino tops cover a week and handle the swing between a hot square and a cold church interior. Lucca is a prosperous provincial city and dresses neatly without fuss.
Covered shoulders and knees for the Duomo di San Martino, San Frediano and San Michele in Foro, all working churches with the code applied at the door.
For summer
A wide brim sun hat, sunscreen and a refillable bottle. The walls have shade from the plane trees, which is exactly why locals walk them in the evening, but the piazzas do not. Tap water is drinkable and there are fountains.
For the Puccini season
If you are here for the summer opera at Torre del Lago, twenty minutes away on the lake, it is an open air theatre: take a layer for after dark, something to sit on, and a rain plan, since performances are weather dependent.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The walls
The circuit is 4.2 kilometres, entirely flat, planted with plane trees and lined with benches, and it functions as the city's park. You can walk it in an hour or cycle it in twenty minutes, and the eleven bastions have grassy interiors you can wander into.
Practically: gravel and earth underfoot, shaded for most of the way, and busy with joggers, dogs and families at all hours. There is no barrier on the inner side at some points, though the drop is modest and grassed.
The Torre Guinigi and the Torre delle Ore
The Guinigi tower has seven holm oaks growing in a garden on its roof, planted by a merchant family in the fifteenth century, and it is the image of the city. The clock tower nearby is taller and less visited.
Practically: the Guinigi climb is around 230 steps on a stone spiral and then a steel stair, and the roof garden is small and gets crowded. The Torre delle Ore is a wooden staircase of similar height. Neither has a lift. Flat shoes and a head for enclosed stairs.
Piazza dell'Anfiteatro
An oval piazza built directly on the footprint of the Roman amphitheatre, the medieval houses following the curve of the old seating. You enter through low archways where the entrance tunnels were. It is the most photographed place in Lucca and the cafes on it are priced accordingly.
The churches
San Michele in Foro has a facade of stacked arcaded loggias that is taller than the church behind it, because the money ran out. The Duomo holds the Volto Santo, a wooden crucifix carried here in the eleventh century, and Jacopo della Quercia's tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, which is the finest thing in the city.
Practically: modest dress, cold interiors, and the Duomo charges for the sacristy where the Ilaria tomb sits.
Via Fillungo and the Palazzo Pfanner
Via Fillungo is the main shopping street, a narrow medieval line of shopfronts with original signage and a few century old cafes still trading. Off it, the Palazzo Pfanner has a baroque garden of statues and lemon trees below the walls, best seen from the rampart above if you do not want to pay to go in, and its frescoed staircase appeared in Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady.
Practically: the street is narrow, busy and closed to traffic, and the garden is small, so half an hour rather than an afternoon. Both sit on the northern side, close to the wall circuit.
Out of the city
The Garfagnana valley runs north into the mountains, the Apuan Alps beyond it are where Carrara marble comes from, and the Ponte della Maddalena, a humpbacked medieval bridge, crosses the Serchio at Borgo a Mozzano. Pisa is forty minutes by train and Florence eighty.
What Not to Bring
Leave heels for the cobbles. Leave a long loose skirt if you intend to cycle. Leave the car outside the walls, where there is parking, since the centre is a restricted zone enforced by camera and the fine arrives months later.
Leave the assumption that Tuscany means hills; this is the one city in the region where a wheeled suitcase is actually fine.
Essential Resources for Women in Lucca
Emergency numbers in Italy: 112 is the single European emergency number and the main line in Italy. The older numbers still work: police 113, ambulance 118, fire 115. Operators on 112 handle English.
Tourist support: Italy has no separate tourist police, but the Polizia di Stato questura in Lucca and the Carabinieri both take reports from visitors. A stolen passport needs a written denuncia filed in person before the consulate can act.
US Embassy and consulate: the embassy is in Rome at Via Vittorio Veneto 121, telephone +39 06 46741, at it.usembassy.gov. The relevant office for Tuscany is the US Consulate General in Florence, Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci 38, around eighty minutes away by train. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: the Ospedale San Luca is the city hospital, a few kilometres outside the walls, with a 24 hour pronto soccorso. EU visitors should carry the European Health Insurance Card; everyone else needs travel insurance, since Italy treats in an emergency and then bills a non resident.
Official health authority: the Italian Ministry of Health at salute.gov.it.
US State Department travel advisory for Italy: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Italy: entry requirements, safety and health guidance.
Official tourism authority: ENIT, the Italian national tourist board, at italia.it, with the Lucca visitor office at turismo.lucca.it for bicycle hire, tower opening hours and the Puccini festival calendar, which runs at Torre del Lago rather than in the city itself.
Solo women safety assessment: Lucca is one of the easiest and safest cities in Italy for a woman travelling alone. It is small, prosperous, walled, and its centre is genuinely residential rather than given over to tourism, which means the streets stay normal in a way Florence's do not. Violent crime against visitors is essentially unheard of, eating alone is unremarkable, and walking or cycling the walls in the evening is what the whole city does. Street harassment is rare. The practical risks are mild. Pickpocketing occurs in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro and around the Duomo at peak hours and on the trains from Florence and Pisa, handled by a closed bag worn in front. The most likely way to get hurt here is on a bicycle: the wall path is shared with pedestrians, dogs and children, the surface is gravel, and the ramps down from the bastions are steeper than they look, so ride at walking pace where it is busy. Inside the city, cyclists and pedestrians mix freely on stone that is slippery when wet. Two practical notes: the city is dark and very quiet after about eleven outside the summer festival season, which is peaceful rather than threatening, and the last trains to Florence and Pisa run earlier than the restaurants close, so check before settling in.
Reading On
Lucca is the most comfortable base in northern Tuscany and an easy add to any Florence or Pisa trip. The Italy travel guide for women is the parent for the whole country and covers the regions, the seasons and the trains, and the Italy packing list for women covers a multi region trip. Closest to hand, the Tuscany travel guide for women covers the region, the Pisa packing list for women covers the city forty minutes west, and the Siena packing list for women and Florence travel guide for women cover the rest of the region. North, the Cinque Terre travel guide for women and Genoa packing list for women cover the coast. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why merino handles a humid Tuscan summer and a damp winter equally well, the best merino wool base layers for women explains the fibre, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
