Lucca to Sant'Anna di Stazzema
- Mike
- Sep 10
- 4 min read
Cycling in the Apuan Alps Part 2 43 miles / 4,300 feet / 3.5 hours
Lucca - San Macario in Piano - Montemagno - Camaiore - La Culla - Sant'Anna di Stazzema - return to Lucca
As described in Cycling in the Apuan Alps Part 1, I would normally take Via dei Porcaresi up to Villa Forci to reach the Camaiore road (SP1) but as they are finally now in the process of rebuilding the collapsed road, Via delle Gavine is the alternative and in fact better route if you're heading in a north-westerly direction from Lucca.
Via delle Gavine is a right turn about 4 miles after leaving the center of Lucca heading west on Viale Puccini/Via Sarzanese. It's a very popular road for Lucca cyclists with little traffic and only a short climb at the end. Initially you follow the signs for Piazzana and then at the top of the climb for Camaiore.
The Camaiore road is a main road which I usually try to avoid, especially during the week, but you're only on it for a few miles and it's quite wide here, at least until you get very close to Camaiore itself.
The start of the climb up to Sant'Anna is on Via Montebello on the opposite side of town so I usually take the most direct route going straight through the center of Camaiore even though that involves going the wrong way down a couple of one-way streets. Most cyclists in Italy, especially elderly men and women doing their shopping, tend to ignore one-way signs I've noticed, but they go slowly and carefully so I do the same.
Anyhow, once you reach Via Montebello you have a 6.3 mile climb in front of you with an average gradient of 6.4% that ascends about 2,200 feet. On this particular climb the average gradient means very little because there are 2 miles in the middle just before reaching La Culla which are mostly around 9% and have sections of 11-13%.
The road ends at Sant'Anna so the higher you go the less traffic you will encounter but it's actually very quiet as soon as you leave Camaiore.
The main purpose of this article is to describe a bike ride I enjoy that has great sea views and mostly quiet roads but for those of you have never heard of Sant'Anna di Stazzema it would be remiss of me not to elaborate on the unfortunate history of this small community.
And if your only knowledge of Sant'Anna is derived from that terribly inaccurate Spike Lee movie called Miracle at St. Anna, then you've been misled.
Having a Tuscan wife, a Tuscan mother-in-law and having lived here myself for over a decade I feel compelled to set the record straight. First let me say that Spike Lee had ample opportunity to make any other film about WW2 American racism because the facts were on his side and it is an unfortunate truth that the US army was segregated at that time and even afterwards.
But that didn't give him the right to play fast and loose with the German atrocities committed at Sant'Anna or to suggest that there was some aspect of Italian culpability involved. Treading on recent Italian history in this fashion was completely irresponsible and ironically something he himself complains about all the time with regard to recent American history.
And why make up a ridiculous story about the head of the Primavera statue on the Santa Trinita bridge in Florence when there is not one shred of truth to his fabrication. Also, Spike Lee may not be aware of this but as I mentioned at length towards the end of my article on La Garfagnana, the good citizens of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana acknowledged with a prominently displayed plaque in the center of town the heroic role of the 370th US Regiment of Buffalo soldiers fighting the German army during the winter of 1944/45.
In a display of peace and reconciliation the German President visited the site in March 2013 together with the Italian president at that time, Giorgio Napolitano. However, it should be noted that at that time Germany was actively preventing the extradition of the war criminals responsible for these atrocities, despite them having been convicted in absentia in Italian courts in 2005. Chief amongst them was Gerhard Sommer who died peacefully in 2019 at the age of 93, never having spent a day in jail or expressed any remorse, so perhaps the German President's visit was only for show.
