Piazza dell'Anfiteatro
From the outside it looks like an ordinary medieval block, but step through any of the four arched passageways on Via Fillungo and you emerge into a perfect oval piazza whose curved outline traces the exact footprint of a 2nd-century Roman amphitheatre. The medieval buildings were simply constructed on top of the ancient seating tiers — the shape has been preserved for 1,800 years.
Reading the Layers of History
At street level you can still see Roman stone blocks embedded in the lower courses of the medieval buildings — look for the large, smooth limestone ashlars that contrast with the rougher brick above them.
The piazza's oval is not perfectly regular because successive generations of builders nudged walls in and out, but the overall ellipse is unmistakable and best appreciated from the Torre Guinigi viewpoint above.
A small plaque near the north entrance marks where the arena floor once stood; the current piazza level is about 1.5 metres higher than the original Roman surface, built up by centuries of accumulated urban debris.
The Piazza Today
By day the oval fills with café tables, children on bicycles and the occasional watercolour artist — it is one of the most relaxed squares in Tuscany precisely because it is set back from the main tourist spine and feels like a neighbourhood living room.
In the evening the restaurants around the perimeter — notably Ristorante Giglio and several enoteca — light up and the oval takes on a theatrical warmth that makes it one of the best aperitivo spots in the city.
The Lucca Summer Festival stages concerts inside the piazza in July, turning the Roman oval into an open-air venue with capacity for several thousand — a genuinely spine-tingling setting for live music.
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