The Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago

Getting there

The Gran Teatro is in via delle Torbiere, on the shore of the lake, north of the Belvedere and the Villa Museo. From the dual carriageway between Viareggio and Pisa you leave at Torre del Lago Puccini and follow the signs for "Festival Puccini", as the Festival writes.

• The Festival car parks: the Festival publishes a map with six car parks around the theatre, P1, reserved, next to the theatre in via delle Torbiere, P2 Pucciniano, P3 Toscanini, P4 Misericordia, P5 C'era una volta and P6 Stadio. The shuttle stop, on the same map, is called Park Lago. For anyone with a motorhome the simplest choice is to leave it where you are sleeping and get to the theatre on foot, by bicycle or with the shuttle
• The Puccini Line shuttle: on performance evenings, in 2026, it left Forte dei Marmi at 19:15 and came down along the sea with stops at Tonfano at 19:30, Lido di Camaiore in viale Colombo at 19:40 and Viareggio, at the Principe di Piemonte at 19:45, in piazza Mazzini at 19:49 and in piazza D'Azeglio at 19:50, reaching the theatre at 20:15; the return leaves twenty minutes after the end of the performance, on the same route in reverse. The Festival writes that the times are approximate and that the shuttle also stops at the campsites, on request. You book on 331 676 8334
• From Lucca: on opera evenings, according to the Festival, Tau Touring runs a coach from Lucca to Torre del Lago that leaves at 19:30 from outside the walls, at Porta San Pietro, and leaves Torre del Lago again at the end of the performance; it costs 40 euros per person, return. You book on 0583 462620, on WhatsApp on 328 581 7110, or by writing to info@tautouring.it
• By train: the Festival points to the stations of Viareggio and Pisa; the closest is Torre del Lago Puccini, in the village, a kilometre and a half from the Belvedere

Practical information

The evening begins at 21:15 and is prepared beforehand: the ticket, the seat, the clothes, and how to get back. You cannot go into the theatre once the performance has started, and latecomers wait for the interval.

Contacts

Where it is

Torre del Lago Puccini, Viareggio · Toscana

You set off from

Notes

• The 2026 programme, the 72nd Puccini Festival, devoted to Turandot in the centenary of its premiere at La Scala on 25 April 1926: Turandot, in a new production for the centenary, on 17 and 24 July and 1 and 9 August; Tosca on 18 and 31 July and 8 and 21 August; La bohème, directed by Ettore Scola, on 25 July and 6 and 28 August; Madama Butterfly on 7 and 22 August and 4 September; La fanciulla del West, in a new production, on 29 August and 5 September. Around them, the galas: Rota and Morricone, film music, on 11 July; the concert of the Italian Navy Band on 12 July, with free admission; Jonas Kaufmann on 22 July; Eleonora Abbagnato in a dance show on Puccini on 27 July; Plácido Domingo on 30 August. At the Auditorium Caruso, in addition, a documentary on Turandot on 10 July and two music theatre shows on 19 July and 11 August
• The 2027 programme, the 73rd Festival, from 9 July to 29 August, is already out and already on sale: La rondine, which in 2027 marks a hundred and ten years since its premiere in Monte Carlo, on 9 July and 22 August; Turandot on 10, 23 and 31 July and 13 and 28 August; Tosca, directed by Alfonso Signorini, on 16 and 24 July and 6 and 21 August; Madama Butterfly on 30 July and 8 and 20 August; La bohème, with sets by Jean-Michel Folon, on 7, 14 and 27 August; Il Trittico, that is Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi on the same evening, on 25 July and 29 August. The galas: a tribute to Italian opera on 11 July, Roberto Alagna on 17 July, cinema from Cinecittà to Hollywood on 12 August, and on 26 August In Love with Puccini, with Vittorio Grigolo and Sonya Yoncheva and Plácido Domingo conducting. All performances begin at 21:15
• The sectors and prices, booking fee included. For the 2026 operas: Gold 195 euros, with a drink at the bar, first sector 148, second 105, third 69, fourth 38, fifth 29. The 2027 price list is the same, but the fifth sector goes down to 25 euros. The 2026 galas cost less: Kaufmann and Domingo from 21 to 150 euros, Rota and Morricone from 28 to 70, Abbagnato from 30 to 65. The seating plan with the sectors is on the Festival website
• Reductions: the price list does not give a price for children, and on the sales website, for 2027, there is only the full price ticket. Discounts are asked for at the box office, cannot be combined and are not valid online; there are those of the partner schemes, almost all 10 per cent off two opera tickets in the sectors from the first to the third or fourth, for members of the Touring Club, the FAI, the ACI, Unicoop Firenze and ARCI and for holders of the Feltrinelli Carta Più. In 2026, for World Music Day on 21 June, the Festival sold the tickets for some evenings at 30 per cent off for one day only: it is worth checking the website in June. The Festival also sells a gift voucher, to be exchanged for tickets for the performance of your choice
• The box office is next to the second entrance of the theatre, in via delle Torbiere. According to the Festival, until September it is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 12:30 and from 15:00 to 18:00, from October from 9:00 to 12:30 and from 14:00 to 17:00, closed on Saturday and Sunday; in June 2026 it was also open on Saturday afternoons. By phone you pay by card, with a link sent to your phone; by email you book and pay by bank transfer. The Festival asks people not to buy from resale websites, where tickets may cost more or be fake
• What to wear: the theatre rules ask for suitable clothing and do not admit anyone wearing shorts, vests, flip-flops or beachwear, with no refund of the ticket. For anyone coming from the beach it is the first thing to remember: in the motorhome keep a pair of long trousers and closed shoes aside
• What to bring and what not to: there is no cloakroom; rucksacks and bags may be searched and must not weigh more than five kilos. You cannot bring food, glass, bottles with caps, tripods or selfie sticks into the auditorium: you go in with a half-litre plastic bottle without its cap, and you eat and drink at the bar, before or during the intervals. You may not photograph or film the performance, not even with your phone. The programme, with the plot and the libretto, is sold at the theatre, and at the bookshop in the foyer you can also buy cushions. The climate of Torre del Lago, writes Wikipedia, is humid in summer, with humidity between 60 and 90 per cent: for going out late at night you need something to put round your shoulders
• If it rains: the performance is never cancelled before the starting time. The Festival may start it up to ninety minutes later, and even have it sung with piano only; tickets are refunded only if the performance is cancelled before it begins, and an opera interrupted after it has started is not refunded
• With children, the first opera: for a first hearing the easiest to follow are La bohème, four scenes with four penniless friends in a garret in Paris and a love story that ends badly, and Turandot, a fairy tale in the Peking of legend, with the princess of the three riddles and Nessun dorma; in 2026 the children's choir of the Puccini Festival, which takes children and young people from 5 to 16 years, also sang in Turandot. Gianni Schicchi is a one-act comic opera, with a libretto by the same Forzano who started the Festival, the one with O mio babbino caro; in 2027 it is performed at the end of Il Trittico, after two tragic operas, on the same evening. The plots are on the Festival website, opera by opera, and it is worth reading them at home the evening before. For Madama Butterfly and La fanciulla del West, in 2026, the Festival put online the easy-language guides and the audio introductions prepared for the Tutti per Puccini project, which can also be listened to at home
• Tutti per Puccini, "everyone for Puccini": in 2026 some performances of Madama Butterfly and La fanciulla del West were accessible to people who are blind, deaf or have cognitive disabilities, with audio description and subtitles on the phone, sign language, and before the performance, at 19:00, a forty-minute backstage tour among the costumes, props and sets. The ticket cost 30 euros for the person with a disability and 1 euro for the companion; you booked fifteen days in advance by writing to tuttiperpuccini@puccinifestival.it
• The Parco della Musica e della Scultura, around the theatre, has sculptures by Igor Mitoraj, Jean-Michel Folon, Kan Yasuda and Pietro Cascella, some of them born as stage sets for the operas. Since October 2025 the park and the theatre foyer have hosted Agorà Celeste, a route with Mitoraj's panels, a diptych by Sandro Chia and works by Ugo Nespolo, Yasuda and Nall: in October 2025, according to the Festival, it could be visited every day, Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 13:30 and Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00, with free admission. In 2025 the park also brought back into the open air Cascella's sculptures for the 2004 Turandot, in the exhibition "... a riveder le stelle"
• Outside the summer: the theatre also works in winter, at the Auditorium Caruso. From November to early January, every year, there is the Mese Pucciniano, the Puccini Month, which remembers Puccini's death on 29 November and his birth on 22 December, with the Premio Puccini given to a name of the opera world; the 2025-2026 edition ran from 18 November to 1 January. In addition, in November 2026, on the 7th and the 21st, there are two concerts at the Auditorium of songs by the Pooh and by Laura Pausini, at 10 euros
• The Villa Museo Giacomo Puccini, on the Belvedere, a few steps from the theatre, is the house where Puccini lived and composed, left as he left it, with the Förster piano, the paintings by his painter friends and the chapel where he is buried with his family: it is described on the Torre del Lago page. On Festival days, according to the Fondazione Simonetta Puccini which runs it, it is open from 10:00 to 12:40 and from 16:00 to 20:40, with the last entry at 20:00 and one entry every forty minutes; the ticket, in a price list that does not give the year, costs 7 euros, 3 euros from 6 to 13 years, free under 6. Telephone 0584 341445
• The Belvedere is the square on the lake at the end of viale Puccini, redone in 2024 for the centenary of his death, with the gazebo on the water built between 1922 and 1924. From the Belvedere, in front of the villa, the boats leave for trips on the lake: the trip is described in the Lake Massaciuccoli experience
• Lucca, where Puccini was born: anyone with a Festival opera ticket pays 2 euros less at the Puccini Museum, his birthplace, and anyone with a ticket for the birthplace gets 10 per cent off two opera tickets, by asking at the box office. The birthplace is described on the Lucca page

Other experiences