Via Fillungo

You’ll quickly discover that in Lucca, every turn of a street brings a new surprise, and here you are right in the heart of the city’s main shopping street. Via Fillungo crosses the entire historic centre and has been Lucca’s main thoroughfare since the Middle Ages. So take the time to stroll along this pedestrian street with its typically medieval winding layout, where buildings tend to rise in height rather than spread in width, and if you look up you may notice that the façades sometimes seem almost to meet at the top. Along the way you’ll find former aristocratic palaces, houses that once belonged to wealthy silk artisans, as well as façades punctuated with mullioned windows supported by slender marble columns. Some stone door frames show off local materials such as Guamo stone, which gives them their pinkish beige hue, and today, these historic buildings are home to shops, cafés and businesses, intertwining medieval architecture with contemporary life.