The City of Walls and Cinema: a long history of love

The city of Lucca has even captured the interest of international productions such as “Tower Stories,” a film by British director Peter Greenaway. The most spectacular scenes are those filmed on the Guinigi Tower, but filming also involved the city’s most iconic locations: the Walls, Piazza San Michele, Piazza San Frediano, Via Beccheria, Piazza Antelminelli, Via del Battistero, Piazza Anfiteatro, the Atelier di Sartoria Ricci, along with fascinating historic buildings such as Palazzo Giustiniani and Palazzo Pfanner. The film tells the story of an aging writer, played by Dustin Hoffman, who decides to take a sabbatical and travel with his family to Lucca, Italy, to trace his far-reaching Italian roots and ponder some unresolved aspects of his life. 

Instead, Lucca’s famous historic villas, such as Villa Mansi and Villa Torrigiani, are immortalized in “The Marquis of Grillo” by Monicelli, “The Innocent” by Luchino Visconti, and “The Triumph of Love” by American Clare Peploe.

Indian director Suseenthiran shot some highlights of the film “Rajapattai” in Lucca, Volterra and Monteriggioni, starring two of India’s most famous actors, Chiyaan Vikram and Deeksha Seth. The plot follows Anal Murugan (Vikram), a gym instructor who aspires to become a movie star but finds himself fighting a ruthless land mafia, which threatens ordinary people in the name of illicit profits.

Chinese director Kong Sheng, highly regarded and the winner of several awards in his homeland, filmed the TV series “The China Story,” produced by China’s first state TV channel, in Lucca and its province.

Not only cinema but also television. The city of Lucca conquered the small screen with the Rai TV series “L’Altro Ispettore” (The Other Inspector), which aired in 2025. Played by Alessio Vassallo, with Cesare Bocci and Tuscan actress Francesca Inaudi, the series stars Domenico Dodaro, known to his friends as Mimmo, a labor inspector who has just returned to his hometown of Lucca after fighting the caporalato (gangmaster system) in the south of Italy, on missions that led him to be recognized as one of Italy’s best labor inspectors. The series was filmed entirely in and around Lucca, in and around Piazza Cittadella, the Baluardo San Colombano, the Walls and the Piazza San Frediano, Piazza San Michele, Piazza San Martino and Piazza Napoleone. 

Another very recent Rai-branded TV series that has affected the city is “Le libere donne” (Free Women) The series, starring actor Lino Guanciale, loosely based on the novel by psychiatrist and writer Mario Tobino, tells an intense story set in World War II Tuscany, also going to Lucca and Monteroni d’Arbia in the province of Siena.

Still on the small screen, the life of the famous poet Giovanni Pascoli was recounted in the Rai film “Zvanì – Il romanzo famgiliare di Giovanni Pascoli” (The Family Novel by Giovanni Pascoli), which aired in January 2026. The set also covered the province of Lucca, particularly Barga and the hamlet of Castelvecchio Pascoli, along with the Sienese extent of Val d’Orcia. It is 1912, as a funeral procession leads Giovanni Pascoli’s body to his hometown of Castelvecchio di Barga, his sister Mariù recalls his life marked by poetry, ambition and family tensions. The cast of the series includes Federico Cesari (Pascoli), Benedetta Porcaroli (Maria Pascoli, aka Mariù), Liliana Bottone, Luca Maria Vannuccini, with special guest appearances by Riccardo Scamarcio and Margherita Buy.