Pisa International Airport to Lucca
About 25 km north-east; the Sky Bus runs direct for €5–8 in 30 minutes, and the train via Pisa Centrale costs about €10 in total.
A town still entirely inside its Renaissance walls, which are now a tree-lined park you can walk or cycle right around — with an amphitheatre turned into an oval piazza and a tower with oak trees growing on top.
Every way to get there
Our verdict: for Lucca, a private transfer is the easiest door-to-door option (from €30). Travelling light on a budget? The bus is cheapest (from €5) but slower, with a change in the city.
What it costs for your group
The bus is charged per person, while a taxi or private transfer is one price for the whole car — so the more of you there are, the better door-to-door value looks.
| Group | Bus (per person) | Private transfer | Best value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo · 1 traveller | €5 | €30 | Bus |
| Couple · 2 travellers | €10 | €30 | Bus |
| Family of 4 · 4 travellers | €20 | €30 | Bus |
Which option should you choose?
| If your priority is… | Our pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest price | Bus | From €5, though slower with a change in the city. |
| Speed & comfort | Private transfer | Door-to-door, fixed price, a driver waiting for you. |
| A group of 3–4 | Transfer or taxi | One flat fare splits cheaper than several bus tickets. |
| A late-night arrival | Transfer or taxi | Both run 24/7 when buses and the tram have stopped. |
By transport mode
Bus / shuttle
Five to eight euros for half an hour — the best-value connection at this airport. Piazzale Verdi is a gate in the walls, so you walk straight into the old town from the stop.
Where to catch it: Direct from outside arrivals to Lucca, setting down at Piazzale Verdi just outside the walls.
Best for solo & budget travellersTrain
More frequent than the coach and useful when the Sky Bus timetable does not fit. Around ten euros all in, fifty minutes with the change.
Where to catch it: PisaMover to Pisa Centrale, then the regional line to Lucca; the station is a short walk from the southern walls.
Best for budget travellers near a stationTaxi
Lucca's walled centre is a limited traffic zone. Taxis may enter to reach a hotel, but private cars cannot — one reason the coach and train work well here.
Where to catch it: Half an hour on the main road; agree the fare in advance.
Best for small groups in a hurryCar rental
Worth it if Lucca is a base for the Garfagnana valleys or the Puccini villas around Torre del Lago. For the town itself, a bicycle hired at the gate is the local method.
Where to catch it: Easy half-hour drive with car parks ringing the walls; do not drive inside them.
Best for travellers who want to exploreLucca & Pisa in photos
Buying tickets in Pisa
Pisa's connection is the best-engineered of any airport in this guide. The PisaMover is a driverless elevated shuttle running to Pisa Centrale in five minutes for €6, every 5–10 minutes from around 06:00 to midnight — no timetable to memorise, no traffic. Buy from the machines by the covered walkway; the ticket also covers the replacement bus if the line is out of service. From Centrale, Tuscany opens up: Florence in about an hour, Lucca in thirty minutes, Livorno and Viareggio in forty. Direct coaches skip the change entirely — Autostradale's Sky Bus to Florence at €15–20 in about 70 minutes, and to Lucca at €5–8 in 30 minutes, both from outside arrivals and cheaper booked online. For Pisa itself the LAM Rossa city bus costs under €3 and stops closer to the Leaning Tower than the PisaMover does, though it is slower. Validate regional train tickets before boarding; the fine is enforced.
Taxi scams & safety in Pisa
Pisa is a low-friction airport and the taxi fares are honest — €18–25 into the city on the meter, and around €170 to Florence, which is a real price for a real 85-kilometre journey rather than an opportunistic one. The genuine financial risk here is the ZTL. Florence's restricted zone is among the strictest in Italy, ringed with cameras, and a driver who enters without a permit passes the fine on to you months later through the rental company or the transfer operator. Confirm the drop-off point when booking rather than at the barrier, and give an exact address rather than a landmark. The same applies in miniature at Lucca, where private cars cannot enter the walls at all, and at Siena and San Gimignano, where cars stop at the gates and everything beyond is on foot. If you are heading to the Cinque Terre, do not hire a car: four of the five villages have effectively no parking and the roads down to them are single-track hairpins — park at La Spezia and take the local train in.
Getting from PSA to Lucca
Five to eight euros, thirty minutes, direct from outside arrivals. The Sky Bus to Lucca is the best-value connection at this airport and it sets down at Piazzale Verdi, which is a gate in the city walls — so you step off the coach and walk straight into the old town. There is no ZTL problem, no last-mile puzzle, and nothing to work out.
The walls, which are the whole point
Lucca kept its sixteenth-century Renaissance ramparts when nearly every other Italian city demolished theirs, and in the nineteenth century they were planted with trees and turned into a park. Four kilometres around, wide enough for two lanes of pedestrians and cyclists, elevated above the streets on one side and the countryside on the other. Walking or cycling the full circuit takes an hour and it is what everyone does first.
Hiring a bicycle
There are rental shops at the gates, charging a few euros an hour, and this is genuinely the local method rather than a tourist activity — Lucca is flat and largely closed to cars, and residents cycle. The walls are the obvious circuit, but the town inside is small enough to cross in ten minutes on two wheels.
The train, if the coach times do not suit
PisaMover to Pisa Centrale, then a regional service to Lucca. About ten euros total and fifty minutes with the change. Trains run more often than the coach, which makes this the fallback when the Sky Bus schedule does not fit your flight.
The amphitheatre that became a square
Piazza dell'Anfiteatro is an oval of houses built into the footprint of a Roman amphitheatre — the arena filled in with medieval buildings that follow the exact curve, with four low arched entrances where the vomitoria were. It is one of the odder pieces of urban survival in Italy and it takes a moment to understand what you are looking at.
The tower with trees on it
Torre Guinigi has seven holm oaks growing from a garden on its roof, planted by the family that built it in the fourteenth century as a display of wealth. Two hundred and thirty steps up and the view takes in the whole town and the walls. It is the image Lucca is known by.
Puccini, who was born here
The house is a museum, there is a statue in the square outside it, and there is a festival in summer at Torre del Lago on the coast where he wrote most of the operas. The town leans into this heavily and the concerts in San Giovanni church run most evenings through the season.
Cars cannot come in
The walled centre is a limited traffic zone and private vehicles are excluded. Taxis may enter to reach a hotel. If you hire a car, park in one of the areas outside the walls and walk — this is not a rule that is loosely enforced, and the cameras are at every gate.
What a taxi costs
€60 to €85 from the airport, half an hour, agreed in advance. Reasonable for a group with luggage, and it can take you inside the walls where a hire car cannot. For most arrivals the €5 coach does the same job.
Where a car does help
The Garfagnana valley runs north into the mountains with fortified villages and the Devil's Bridge at Borgo a Mozzano, and the Puccini villas cluster around Torre del Lago on the coast. Neither has useful public transport. Lucca is a good base for both, with parking outside the walls and the town on foot.
The streets themselves
Via Fillungo is the main shopping street and follows the line of a Roman road. San Michele in Foro stands on the old forum with a facade of stacked loggias that is considerably taller than the church behind it — it was built for a nave that never came. The cathedral has a Roman-era labyrinth carved beside its door.
Why people choose it over Florence
Lucca is a working town of ninety thousand people that happens to be beautiful, rather than a city organised around visitors. It is quieter, cheaper, and forty minutes from Pisa by train and eighty from Florence. A good many returning visitors to Tuscany end up basing themselves here for exactly that reason.
