Lucca's Wall, Lucca, Tuscany, Italy

The current wall around Lucca, which last year marked it's 500th anniversary, is wide enough at the top to accommodate all manner of visitors. This view gives a sense of how wide the top is. This most recent of four separate walls built over the centuries, took about 100 years to build, the citizens paying large sums annually to finance it.

I appreciate planners with the long view - trees planted years ago yield their benefits to the current generation.

It's like a circular park - people of all ages - walkers, strollers, joggers, bikers, sitters, domino players, chess players.  Arm in arm, old and young - la dolce vita - the sweet life -  as only the Italians can do so well and have taught the world.

A nice place to try out your training wheels while mom and dad walk behind.

Or bike the flat, smooth main walkway around the 2.5 mile circumference.  In this section of the wall, these trees are a newer generation.

Nice long afternoon shadows and lines on the inside of the wall near a neighborhood park with swingsets.

This fancy and large villa inside the wall is visible from the walking path.....

...as is this one.

And looking outside the wall, more villas and churches wait for this towering thunderstorm to soon unleash its rain. Walking the walls on a Sunday, I heard bells toll as they have for a thousand years calling the faithful to worship.

The wall when viewed from the outside stands about 30 feet high, has a broad grassy area, and a moat-like stream.  There are six main entrances (portals) through which authorized vehicles can gain entry and a few other pedestrian tunnels through the wall.

Pardon my crude hand drawing but, these colored lines generally represent the various walls over the past 2000 years. The red boundary was the original Roman version built around 200 B.C., the blue and yellow followed in later centuries, and now today's wall, moat/stream, and the ten arrowhead-like bastions are in green. The current perimeter wall is about 2.5 miles/ 4 kilometers, very broad across the top, and has both a paved surface and unpaved surface for the people to enjoy. Attack does not seem imminent.