Today we were ready for a more relaxing day, so it was suggested that we visit Lucca, a walled city founded by the Romans (who else?), and completely intact as it was during the Renaissance.  The walls are brick and high, and you enter through one of several gates that give you an idea of how strong the fortifications would have been.  When we left, we passed through two layers of walls at least twenty feet thick, lined with cobbles, and sloping downward out of the town, which would have been a very hard push uphill by armed men.  But I digress.

We had taken the train from Livorno via Viareggio.   Luccanis one of the most beautiful walled cities in Tuscany you can find.  It’s definitely worth a trip.

After entering the city, we headed toward a campanile we could see above the rooftops, and were suddenly in a huge piazza with St. Martin’s church at the side.  A street musician was playing and his voice echoed around the piazza, rather amplifying the space.  I could imagine velvet-hatted businessmen in the fourteen hundreds hurrying across, to disappear into one of the narrow alleys at the end.

You can just make out the original Roman street plan, from the fact that the two main streets intersect at right angles, but the rest of the town developed piazzas, and curving streets that seem to go in circles.  Don’t try this without a map.  The town is small by modern standards, but you can still get confused.  The churches are interesting:  St. Martin’s is white marble with green marble inlay, and a campanile that gets more intricate the higher up you look.  In my photo above and across the piazza is a house I am convinced is very old;  the stone window sills were word down almost nothing in spots.  Shopping in the town offers nice leather goods at quite good prices;  the olive oil from the region, as well as Tuscan biscuits, cookies and honey are offered at shops that have narrow fronts, but are surprisingly large, because the buildings are so deep.

The city walls are so wide, they are wide enough for a park that circles the city.  You can rent bikes, including tandem bikes, and I saw families pedaling a kind of car with a perch up front for babies and small children.  Lots of walkers were out with dogs.  You have to watch out for the bikers.  They are too polite to ring a bell at you, so they continually almost run you down.  From this height, you can see that some of the houses have large gardens surrounded by their own high walls;  other buildings have terraces and balconies hung with flowers to catch the breezes.

It was a nice, relaxing day.  We stopped for a leisurely lunch, and got back to Livorno in time for another big family dinner.  I have officially reached my gustatory breaking point.