Lucca is fairly easy to navigate, especially with the new street signs that guide you through a fairly comprehensive walk accross town. If local people give you directions though, they might give you a few names that you might have trouble finding on a map of the city. The reasons for those names is also often interesting, so here they are:

A Porta is not always a gate

Porta is Italian for gate: if you are driving into the city, you are likely to enter the walls through Porta Santa Anna, Porta Elisa or Porta Santa Maria. Easy.

Don't look for Porta dei Borghi or Porta San Gervasio along the walls though: these were gates... before the last time the city expanded and the wall was rebuilt. So what were gates on the old walls are now just arches across regular streets (they are actually also called archo).

Porta dei Borghi is on via Filungo, close to piazza Santa Maria. Porta San Gervasio is on via del Fosso, where via Santa Croce becomes via Elisa.

Napoleon is Grand

Most maps of Lucca have the main square labelled as Piazza Napoleone, but I don't think I have ever heard anyone name it anything other than Piazza Grande, which is shorter, more descriptive, and doesn't pay hommage to a foreign invader.

3 times a Piazza

We live near a square whose official name is Piazza Santa Maria Forisportam. In latin Forisportam means outside the walls, even though the square is very much inside the walls (see A Gate... for the explanation!). Of course this is way too long of a name, so you will often hear it being referred to as Santa Maria Bianca. Which brings an other problem: there is another Piazza Santa Maria in Lucca (near Porta Santa Maria). So usually, Piazza Santa Maria Forisportam becomes: la piazza della colonna mozza: the square with the broken column. Simple isn't it?

posted by michel, 2005-10-19