Lucca –This is what Italian Perfection is Like! A couple of weeks ago I had never heard of Lucca. Today I am convinced that it is so perfect that I could happily spend the rest of my days here. When I last travelled through Italy – which was over 30 years ago – no one even mentioned Lucca as a place worth visiting. The tourist “stations of the cross” were Venice, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Pompeii, Siena, Verona and it was mandatory to drive around sections of the country’s dramatically beautiful coast. No mention of Lucca. Today everyone with detailed knowledge of the country insists on Lucca ... and, to use some Queensland vernacular, “they are not wrong”. All the things worth loving about historic Italian cities are distilled into this wonderfully manageable, and endlessly entertaining, walled city. Lucca is as rich in its sense of surprise as Venice. Every corner will leave you gasping as you come across a narrow alleyway, a beautiful facade, a uniquely glorious church or cathedral, a piazza bursting with life and vitality, a line of washing dangling precariously out a third storey window, a burnished terra cotta roof baking in the late summer sun, and a local on a bicycle weaving through the moochers. The city wall, intact and broad, offers a delightful 4km circumnavigation of the old city. It may not be possessed of the sublime, quirky beauty of Dubrovnik’s old wall but it is a pleasant walk on a grassy path along a tree-lined route designed for the ultimate early evening promenade. The old city is not stuffed to the rafters with the indulgent excesses of those Renaissance Donald Trumps, the Medicis. Rather, unless you have a passion for a rare Tintoretto or (my favourite) Fra Lippo Lippi (actually Filippo Lippi but I love the Robert Browning poem), you are forced to experience the walled city viscerally rather than historically and artistically. In other words you mooch, wander, get lost down narrow laneways and hidden passageways, hire bicycles and pedal around town and just gaze and spend time catching the nuances and subtleties which can elude those who do not pause and contemplate. It is a medieval city which is lived in by ordinary people. Even the tour groups – my personal bête noir – seem to be charming. There’s one which is done entirely on bicycle – something unimaginable (and quite impossible) in Florence or Sienna. And, most importantly, where Florence and Sienna are still awash with elderly Germans and Americans, Lucca has tourists but, like Goldilocks, they are not too many, not too few, they are just right. I love it – and I love it with a passion. Thanks to Kai, Tracy, Christine and Marius. Your local knowledge has enriched my travels. I’ll eulogise Lucca again tomorrow. In the meantime here are a few pix: * in the early evening everyone seems to cycle, walk dogs, promenade on the 4 km wall around the city. Yes, we did walk around it and we will do it again tomorrow. * the city’s wall and an amazing Tuscan sky. * L’Anfiteatro dates back to Roman times but that doesn’t stop the residents hanging their washing out to dry. * A bicycle tour of the city. What a great idea!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 04:59:31 +0000
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