Lucca

Imagine a beautiful little Tuscan town protected by massively thick 16th-century walls, featuring some of Italy’s finest medieval and Renaissance architecture, superb dining, antique markets, classical and rock music festivals. Lucca is one of Tuscany’s best-kept secrets. A wealthy and colorful town that draws a more discerning tourist than Florence or Pisa, it is sufficiently off the beaten track to have kept its civility and reserve. Lucca is a city of merchants who know how to woo the visitor and the shopper, but the pace of life varies between slow and slower.