Near the hamlet of Torre del Lago on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, only a couple of miles inland from the Tuscan coast, Giacomo Puccini built himself a villa. Here he wrote most of his operas, and in later life sought refuge between the rigorous demands of the worldwide tours which fame and success had thrust upon him. Here also is the open-air theatre where, since 1955, there has been an (almost) annual festival to celebrate the local boy who brought to a culmination the most Italian of the arts, lyric theatre. In 2008 the festival celebrated the 150th anniversary of Puccini’s birth in Lucca with the inauguration of a larger and more impressive theatre on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli.

Other places associated with the composer are scattered through the hills and valleys of the hinterland including his birthplace in Lucca, where this tour is based, the village of his ancestors and childhood holidays, churches where he worked as an organist, bars he frequented. The house of his birth in Lucca has been closed for some years but re-opens for 2012.

Within the remarkably complete and beautiful circuit of Renaissance ramparts, Lucca consists of a dense network of streets and squares with innumerable fine palaces and churches.

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