San Luca Palace City-Center Hotel - Historic Residence - Luxury Hotel

Character: Newly renovated historic residence with very large rooms and luxurious amenities. Advantages: In-town location; beautiful amenities; friendly hosts. Location: Right in the center of Lucca, inside the walls. 800 yards from the train station. Easily visit Florence, Pisa and the Cinque Terre from here without a car. Click here to see a map. Size: 26 rooms on four floors, including 17 junior suites, 3 suites, 4 double rooms and 2 single rooms. Features: Antique furnishings, luxury fabrics and accessories, air conditioning, direct-dial telephone, flat-screen satellite TV, DSL access, mini-bar, safe, private bathroom with hair dryer, terrycloth robes and slippers; elevator; garden and locked car park. Price includes a delicious breakfast. Minimum stay: Two nights. Disadvantages: None we can think of! Car needed: No, but if you plan to tour the cities of Tuscany from here, it is much easier with a car.

The first thing you will see when you get to Lucca is its picturesque ancient walls, with their unique tree-lined ramparts. At intervals along this amazing bulwark are the original guardhouses and munitions storehouses. If you go to Lucca on a Sunday afternoon you'll see the locals up there, strolling or riding their bicycles, chatting and laughing and surreptitiously checking out each other's latest fashion acquisitions. You are strongly urged to rent a bike and join them!

Thanks to those walls, and Lucca's slightly out-of-the-way location, it has been able to grow rich over the centuries. Wealthy silk merchants and aristocrats built magnificent villas whose extravagant gardens you can still visit today. Inside the walls, the streets are lined with stately palaces; one of them, dating back to the year 1540, occupies the former site of a 13th-century hospital for wayfarers. In keeping with the tradition of offering hospitality to travelers, it has been beautifully renovated and now hosts this luxury hotel, which would have been a perfectly suitable resting place for the royal courtiers who followed Napoleon's sister here when she reigned as "Queen of Etruria." Today, the gleaming parquet floors, luxurious decorations and sumptuous furnishings are complemented by a host of ultra-modern amenities. One of the aspects most enjoyed by American travelers is the size of the rooms: the smallest guestroom measures 270 square feet! Suites have a sitting room and a separate bedroom. Some rooms overlook the (pedestrians-only) street, while others are above the courtyard. Families with two children can reserve a junior suite with connecting double room. Each is reached by elevator; open your door with your magnetic card and you'll find air conditioning and heating, a flat-screen satellite television with pay-per-view channels, direct-dial telephone with DSL access, mini bar, wall safe, and private bathroom with stall shower or bathtub, hair dryer and courtesy set.

On the ground floor of the hotel is a cozy cocktail bar, a lounge with fireplace, and a sunny breakfast room where you'll enjoy a rich buffet of homemade pastries, fresh fruit, local cold cuts and cheeses, scrambled eggs and bacon, and of course, a piping hot cappuccino. Afterwards, you are off to discover the area. Lucca is a great base for all kinds of day trips. Easily accomplished by train are Pisa (35 km), Cinque Terre (90 km), Florence (75 km) and Siena (140 km). You can also drive down the Tuscan coast, which has some of the most beautiful beaches, pine forests, rocky coves and promontories in Italy. In July and August, be sure to attend at least one opera at Puccini's home, just outside the city. In the evening, enjoy an aperitif in the garden before heading off to discover Lucca's topnotch restaurants, all only a short stroll from your very own palace.

For this property:
A child 0-6 years old stays free in its parents’ double room.
A cot for a child under 2 costs 25 Euro/night paid in Italy, and must be reserved at time of booking.
Locked parking on the property costs 10 Euro/night and must be reserved at time of booking.
The hotel will be happy to help you with bicycle rental.

Click here for information about private transfers to the property.

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