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North To San Frediano
Via Cenami leads from the duomo north to the Torre delle Ore , the city’s clock tower since 1471. From here, Via Fillungo cuts through Lucca’s luxury shopping district. San Frediano is again Pisan-Romanesque, featuring a magnificent thirteenth-century exterior mosaic of Christ in Majesty , with the Apostles gathered below. The interior (Mon-Sat 7.30am-12.30pm & 3-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm & 3-6pm except during services) lives up to the facade’s promise - a delicately lit, hall-like basilica. Facing the door is the Fonta Lustrale , a huge twelfth-century font executed by three unknown craftsmen. Set behind the font is an Annunciation by Andrea della Robbia, festooned with trailing garlands of ceramic fruit. The left-hand of the two rear chapels houses the incorrupt body of St Zita (died 1278), a Lucchese maidservant who achieved sainthood from a white lie: she used to give bread from her household to the poor, and when challenged one day by her boss as to the contents of her apron, she replied “only roses and flowers” - into which the bread was transformed. She is commemorated on April 27 by a flower market outside the church. Lucca’s best frescoes - Amico Aspertini ’s sixteenth-century scenes of the Arrival of the Volto Santo , the Life of St Augustine and The Miracle of St Frediano - occupy the second chapel of the left aisle. Frediano, an Irish monk, is said to have brought Christianity to Lucca in the sixth century and is depicted here saving the city from flood.
A short distance south, at Via degli Asili 33, is the Palazzo Pfanner (daily 10am-6pm; gardens L3000/¬1.55, tour of house L3000/¬1.55, both L5000/¬2.58). The palazzo, housing a textiles collection, is less interesting than its rear loggia and exquisite statued gardens with fountain. They can be seen to good effect from the city walls just nearby, which also yield a good overview of another fine church, Sant’Agostino .
East of San Frediano is the remarkable Piazza Anfiteatro . This ramshackle circuit of medieval buildings, built on the foundations of the Roman amphitheatre that once stood here (arches and columns of which can still be discerned), is now ringed by cafés. South past a covered market looms the Torre Guinigi , the fifteenth-century home of Lucca’s leading family and one of the strangest sights in town: its battlemented tower is surmounted, 44m up, by a holm oak whose roots have grown into the room below. You can climb the tower from Via Sant’Andrea (daily: March-Sept 9am-7.30pm; Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-Feb 10am-4.30pm; L5000/¬2.58).
