Lucca

The Romans gave Lucca, which they called Luca, the shape it still has. It became a Roman colony in 180 BC and a municipium in 89 BC; the rectangular grid of the historic centre preserves the Roman street plan, Piazza San Michele stands on the site of the forum, the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro follows the oval of the amphitheatre, and the outline of a Roman theatre survives in Piazza Sant'Agostino. In 56 BC Caesar, Pompey and Crassus met here to renew the First Triumvirate.

From 576 to 797 Lucca was the capital of the Lombard Duchy of Tuscia and minted its own coins, and in the 10th and 11th centuries it was the capital of the margraviate of Tuscany. The Holy Face, a large wooden crucifix said by legend to have been carved by Nicodemus, arrived in the 8th century and is still the city's most precious relic. From the 11th century Lucca grew rich on silk: Lucca cloth, woven with gold or silver thread, rivalled the silks of Byzantium. For almost 500 years it remained an independent republic, the second-largest Italian city state after Venice to keep a republican constitution, and it built its great walls in fear of Florence.

In 1805 Napoleon turned the republic into a principality for his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi. From 1815 it was a Bourbon-Parma duchy, and in 1847 Lucca lost its independence and was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The walls, which had never been tested in war, were turned into a public promenade in the 1820s; their only test came in the Serchio flood of November 1812. Under the Italian Social Republic in the Second World War, an internment camp at Lucca held political prisoners, foreigners and Jews.

Lucca is a city of music. Giacomo Puccini, composer of La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, was born here, as were Luigi Boccherini, Alfredo Catalani, Francesco Geminiani and earlier composers such as Nicolao Dorati and Gioseffo Guami. Puccini later lived and worked by Lake Massaciuccoli at Torre del Lago, where he is buried and where an open-air opera festival bearing his name draws around 40,000 people each summer. In July the Lucca Summer Festival brings international rock and pop stars to Piazza Napoleone.

The city's religious life centres on the Holy Face, kept in a small octagonal shrine in the cathedral. On the evening before the feast of the Holy Cross on 14 September, the Luminara di Santa Croce winds through the old town as a long candlelit procession with religious brotherhoods, bands, crossbowmen and figures in medieval dress, and a medieval fair is held in the tunnels beneath the San Pietro bastion during September.

At the end of October and the start of November, Lucca Comics & Games turns the old town over to comics, animation, games and video games; it is Europe's largest comics festival and the second biggest in the world, and the streets fill with costumed fans. The city also hosts a literary festival, LuccAutori, every October since 1995, and Cartasia, a biennial exhibition devoted entirely to paper art.

About 89,000 people live in the comune and around 380,000 in the province. Most residents live outside the walls in the newer districts and villages of the plain, while the old town combines homes above shops with offices, schools and the university campus in the former San Francesco convent; the deconsecrated church of San Ponziano is now the university library.

The city is known as an Italian "city of art" for its almost intact walls and well-preserved centre, and its festivals and monuments draw visitors through the year. Driving inside the walls is mostly limited to residents, so much of the centre moves on foot and by bicycle.

The walls themselves are the city's park and meeting place: the 4 km pedestrian promenade on top links the bastions of Santa Croce, San Frediano, San Martino and others, and is walked and cycled by residents and visitors alike. The local football club plays at the Stadio Porta Elisa just outside the north-east wall, and the Serchio, which flooded the plain in 1812, still runs along the northern edge of the city.

Lucca's cooking belongs to Tuscany but has its own dishes. Tordelli are its ravioli, made with a thicker dough than usual and filled with meat and herbs. Soups draw on the countryside: minestra di farro, made with spelt, and garmugia, a spring soup of artichokes, asparagus, broad beans and peas.

A traditional sweet is buccellato di Lucca, a ring-shaped sweet bread made with sultanas and anise, distinct from the Sicilian cake of the same name.

Eating out centres on the trattorias of the old town and the tables set out in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro and the squares around San Michele. Pane lucchese, unlike most Tuscan bread, is salted. Rovelline alla lucchese are slices of breaded fried meat finished in the pan with tomato and capers, and biroldo is a sausage of pig's blood and offal. Other sweets include castagnaccio, made with chestnut flour and called torta di neccio in local dialect; pasimata, an Easter sweet bread; and torta co' becchi, a shortcrust tart, often of chocolate, custard or greens, whose folded rim forms 'beaks'. Biadina and China Massagli are local herb liqueurs, and the hills produce the Colline Lucchesi and Montecarlo DOC reds.