Where you can legally marry in and around Lucca

This page covers places in and around Lucca where couples who live abroad can legally marry: inside Lucca’s walls at Palazzo Orsetti, in historic villas just outside the city, in the villa country of Capannori to the east, and on the coast at Pietrasanta. Each comune (the local council) sets its own list of places, its own fees and its own days. These are examples: the lists run longer than this page, most comuni in the area hold civil weddings for couples from abroad, and venues, fees and days change from year to year.

A legal wedding in Italy has to take place somewhere the comune has approved: its own buildings and gardens, or an outside venue it has authorised, such as a villa. Everything below is on a comune’s approved list, so a wedding there is legal and counts at home. The city walls and Palazzo Pfanner are not on Lucca’s list.

Lucca: a green salon in the comune’s palazzo

Lucca’s own wedding venue is the Sala Verde at Palazzo Orsetti, the sixteenth-century palazzo built by the Diodati family that now houses the mayor’s office. You come in from Via del Loreto through one of two portals, one crowned by a carved triton and the other by a siren, climb a staircase lined with portraits of the old Republic’s senators, and marry in what was the family’s salon, its walls hung with green brocade. The Sala della Musica next door, with red drapes and an eighteenth-century chandelier, is the alternative. Each takes up to 30 people. The ceremony is indoors; the walled garden in front is open to you for photographs afterwards.

For a couple who both live outside Lucca, the comune charges €480 on a weekday morning, €720 on a weekday afternoon, €900 on a Saturday morning and €1,000 on a Saturday afternoon (comune page, April 2026). There are no Sunday ceremonies at the palazzo. Each wedding has the use of the sala for up to an hour, rice and rose petals are for outside only, and the comune takes your first contact no earlier than six months before the date.

Lucca’s villas: lemon houses and garden theatres

Lucca also marries couples in historic villas outside the walls, four of which the comune has made registry offices of their own. Villa Bernardini at Vicopelago, built around 1615, has a seventeenth-century salon for a civil ceremony in bad weather. At San Pancrazio, Villa Grabau holds ceremonies in its seventeenth-century lemon house, on its ground floor or in its teatro di verzura, a garden theatre of clipped hedges. Its neighbour Villa Oliva, a Renaissance villa linked to the sculptor Matteo Civitali, has a five-hectare park with fountains, and its stables take civil weddings of up to 200. Villa Sardi is up in the Brancoli hills at about 300 metres. The comune’s list also includes its own Villa Bottini inside the walls, and Villa Rossi at Gattaiola, with its frescoed loggia.

For a couple who live outside Lucca, the comune’s fee at the villas is €700 on a weekday morning, €1,000 on a weekday afternoon and €1,250 on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday (2013 tariff, still on the comune’s page in April 2026). Each villa charges its own hire on top, so secure the villa for your date first, then book the comune.

Capannori: Villa Reale di Marlia and the villa belt

East of Lucca, the comune of Capannori covers the plain of country villas that Lucca’s merchant families built. Its approved list has eleven villas and estates, among them Villa Reale di Marlia, the country residence of Napoleon’s sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi. You can marry outdoors in its lemon garden, with some 200 citrus pots around a fishpond, in the Spanish garden crossed by small canals, by the lake, or in the Grotto of Pan, a nymphaeum that suits a very small wedding. The restored stables are the wet-weather option.

For couples who live elsewhere, its own venues, which include the municipio and Parco Pandora, cost €150 on a weekday, €200 on a weekend morning and €400 on a weekend afternoon. At the villas the comune charges €700 on a weekday morning, €800 on a weekday afternoon and €1,000 at weekends and on holidays, with the villa’s own hire on top (comune pages, February 2025). Two couples who share a slot pay half each.

Pietrasanta: a cloister in the marble town and a pier on the sea

Pietrasanta is at the foot of the Apuan marble mountains. In the old town you can marry in the Sant’Agostino complex, a former convent with a cloister, or at the Rocca and the Parco della Lumaca on the hill above. Down at the sea, the comune marries couples on the pier at Tonfano, and from June to September in the pine woods of La Versiliana, the estate where D’Annunzio spent his summers. All four are outdoor settings.

The comune’s tariff for couples who live elsewhere is €500 on a weekday morning or €800 in the afternoon or on a holiday for Sant’Agostino and the Rocca, €600 or €800 on the pier, and €1,000 or €1,200 at La Versiliana (December 2024). The council chamber costs €100 or €300. Pietrasanta also lets couples from abroad make their declaration on the wedding day, by appointment.

What these have in common

In every case the registrar conducts the ceremony in Italian, and if either of you, or a witness, does not speak Italian, the law requires an interpreter, who cannot be one of you. The paperwork you need depends on your nationality, not on the comune. In Lucca the declaration is drawn up at the comune’s offices two or three days before the wedding, with your interpreter present, so plan to arrive early in the week; Pietrasanta can take it on the day.

The outdoor settings on this page are the villa gardens of Lucca and Capannori and to Pietrasanta’s pier, cloister and pine woods; at Palazzo Orsetti the garden is for photographs. What changes from one comune to the next is the setting, the price, the days it marries and how far ahead it takes bookings.

If one of these places is the one you are picturing, or you have somewhere else around Lucca in mind, book a call or message us on WhatsApp with your date and roughly how many guests, and we will find out what the comune there can offer.

Checked October 2026.

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