Casa di Puccini

Just north of the Piazza Cittadella is Casa di Puccini, the modest house where one of the 20th century's greatest composers was born in 1858. He lived there until studies at Milan's music conservatory beckoned him aged 22.

Inside, everyday objects tell the tale of the composer's life. Specs and pen lay poised on the desk next to the Steinway piano on which Puccini, the last in a line of celebrated Lucca musicians, wrote much of Turandot (1926) while staying at his seaside villa in Viareggio in 1921. The opera, unfinished when he died, was the last before throat cancer got the better of him after last-ditch surgery in Brussels failed in 1924.