If you drive to Lucca, parking can be a problem: one of the reasons Lucca is worth the visit is that there are very few cars in town. Only residents can drive in most of the city center.

For visitors the options are to:

• park within the city: enter through one of the gates, and find a parking spot nearby. You need to park in a space marked with blue lines, the ones with yellow lines are for residents only, and you cannot drive through streets with a round red on white circle. You are likely to find space early in the morning or in the off-season, it will cost you 0.5 to 1 euro per hour, and your best bets are Porta Santa Anna and Porta Santa Maria.
• park off of the street that runs along the city walls, either by the street side or in one of the (very!) small parking lots by Porta Santa Anna or by Porta Elisa. You can park for 2 hours (and are unlikely to get fined for a day) anywhere. If you are staying longer, you cannot park in the parking lots. This is free.
• park in one of the big parking lots around the city. Parking Carducci is the closest to the Walls. It is easy to find, right on the road that circles the Walls. Follow the signs to it (they will also give you the number of available spaces), park, exit and follow the road to your right, cross the street when you get to the first traffic lights, head stright towards the wall, and you will sneak into Lucca through one of the narrow passageways that take you inside the Walls. This is probably the easiest and less stressful way to deal with parking.

posted by michel, 2005-08-24