Mura di Lucca

Lucca's walls form a Renaissance and early modern defensive ring later transformed into a tree-lined urban park. Bastions, broad embankments and gates preserve the military framework around the historic city.

Why it matters

The walls show how fortification adapted to gunpowder artillery. Their later landscaping gave military ground a new civic role, preserving the circuit as an integral part of the city's landscape rather than dismantling it.

What to notice

Eleven bastions and twelve curtain walls articulate a circuit of more than four kilometres. Brick facing contains substantial earthworks, whose breadth contrasts with the narrower profiles of medieval walls. Grassy terraces and mature trees soften the defensive geometry, while the relationship between the enclosed rooftops and the surrounding plain remains clear.

Context and history

The surviving ring followed earlier circuits of Roman and medieval walls. Its construction extended through the sixteenth century into the mid-seventeenth century. Although conceived for war, it also helped defend the city against the Serchio flood of 1812. In the early nineteenth century, the ducal programme associated with Maria Luisa and architect Lorenzo Nottolini began its transformation into a landscaped promenade, developed further through later planting.