Even on a tight schedule, Lucca Day-Trip earns the hours.
Allow Full or half day.
The Lucca taste anchor, rendered as experience: the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro is a ring of pastel houses built directly on the oval footprint of a vanished Roman amphitheatre, so you step through a low arch and find yourself standing inside the ghost of the arena, cafés where the spectator tiers were — at aperitivo hour, with a spritz and the swallows wheeling overhead, it's one of the loveliest squares in Tuscany. The other is the Torre Guinigi, the medieval tower with full-grown holm oaks sprouting from its rooftop. Bike the tree-topped walls between the two. The catch: it's a 'soft' town with no single must-see masterpiece, so spectacle-hunters find it sleepy.