Every design for Lucca

The Romans knew Lucca as Luca, and the name points to light: studies link it to lucus, a sacred grove, and to leuk, a luminous space, a clearing cut into the woods on an island of river debris in the Serchio. The town that grew there became a Roman colony, kept the Roman grid in its streets and, in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, the outline of its amphitheatre.

Lucca lies in a fertile plain on the left bank of the Serchio, closed in by the Pizzorne plateau to the north and the Monti Pisani to the south. Summers are hot and close, winters often dip below freezing, and from the centre the land rises towards the Apennine heights within the same municipality. In the old town, the Cattedrale di San Martino, the Basilica di San Frediano and the Palazzo Guinigi with its tower all stand within a few streets of one another.

Round all of it run the Mura di Lucca, the almost intact Renaissance walls that make the city recognisable at a glance: a ring on the map that needs no name beside it.