Lucca LU

The pier at Forte dei Marmi was built in 1877 to load Apuan marble onto ships, and that explains the province of Lucca better than a map: the quarry mountains and the beach are a few kilometres apart. Third in Tuscany by population, it holds together 33 municipalities with little in common, from the walled city and its farming plain to the seaside strip known as the Versilia. Lucca hardly dominates: under a quarter of the province lives there, and the resort of Viareggio is close behind.

Viareggio has given a full month to Carnival since 1873, its papier-mâché floats built as tall as apartment blocks. Pietrasanta carves marble for sculptors from every continent, and Botero, who lived there, left two frescoes behind. Lucca is ringed by four kilometres of sixteenth-century ramparts, now a tree-lined walk above the roofs, and Giacomo Puccini was born inside them in 1858. Behind Torre del Lago opens the lake of Massaciuccoli.