If you are planning a Holiday or visit Tuscany, don't miss a seeing the town of Lucca. Lucca is a small town in the heart of Tuscany that offers visitors an exquisite example of Romanesque architecture displayed in all of its glory throughout the town. The cathedrals of San Michele and San Martino are two of the best examples of the Romanesque architecture to be seen in Lucca, or all of Northern Italy for that.

Lucca sits near the Serchio River, about 30 kilometers from Pisa and 80 kilometers from Florence. The town itself rests on a plateau under the watchful gazes of the Apuane Alps. The medieval walls, thick and strong, built in the sixteenth century still surrounds the town and the walkways present on the top of the walls offer an enjoyable opportunity for biking or walking to nearby sights.

The town is full of charming shops and antique markets that offer a variety of unique and interesting items. In fact, the town is sufficiently insulated from the hectic pace of city life, that it provides a restful and peaceful vacation spot with many great restaurants and hotels. A natural pulsating amphitheatre of vines and olive trees, the Lucca hills watch over the great sprawling plains below them, immutable from a distance. There are numerous roads that lead from the base of the hills up to this enchanted place where the human hand, so able in modeling terraces and walls for olive groves and vineyards, has been halted by forests of chestnut, oak and acacia that cover a large part of the landscape.

The road seems to be never-ending, passing through the middle of the mountain’s flank, defining the edges of fields and farms. This artful segmentation begins on the other side of the Serchio River, or more precisely from La Cappella, Mutigliano and Monte San Quirico, which are the first or last villages (depending on which direction you take) of the DOC denomination. The Serchio river divides this area from the next that leads from Ponte a Moriano towards Matraia, Valgiano, Tofori and Gragnano and from there the Via Pesciatina separates the last (or first) part, the high hill of Porcari that faces the soul mate of Lucca’s winegrowing hills: Montecarlo, where our winemaking history began.