Hotel Napoleon Review: A Cosy Stay Near Lucca's Renaissance Walls

Lucca is an absolutely beautiful little city located on the Serchio River in Italy’s Tuscany region. If you love peaceful Italian cities, it’s worth the trip even if you only have a day or two to explore!

I stayed at the Hotel Napoleon just outside the town walls and I’ve popped my full review below. Essentially, if you’re looking for a clean and comfy place to stay, Hotel Napoleon might just be the place for you!

The location:

The big draw for us when visiting Lucca was the main part of the town located inside the Renaissance walls. I’m sure there’s a lot more to do and see, but as we only had one day here, this was where we wanted to centre our exploring so booked a hotel that was close enough to do this but still within budget!

Hotel Napoleon was around 10 minutes from the city gates, which was perfect for us as we didn’t mind a little walk, but if you are looking to be a little closer you can also find hotels within the walls. Just be warned, you will likely be paying a premium for this!

The only big thing to note about the location of Hotel Napoleon, which may put some people off is that it is located on a big strip of motorway. However, this didn’t bother me as it was far enough back from the road that it wasn’t as if we were hearing lots of traffic noise etc and there was a marked crossing so we never felt particularly unsafe crossing the road.

Customer service:

Generally, the staff were super friendly and helped us with a map of the town and all of the key places to visit. However, as I’ve mentioned in my Lucca itinerary post, we had a few issues getting to the hotel, and they were pretty unhelpful. I do feel like some of the other hotels have been given way more support in situations like this and I was surprised that they weren’t even able to book us a taxi.

To explain the situation, we were around a 25-30 minute car ride from the hotel when we found ourselves stranded at a station between Florence and Lucca (Google Maps can be a blessing and a curse!). We needed to wait 2 hours for the replacement bus, and my mum wasn’t feeling great, so I messaged the hotel through booking.com to see if they could help us book a taxi (my phone wasn’t calling out for some reason). Unfortunately, they said they couldn’t help and when I tried to clarify that I only wanted them to call a taxi I was ignored. The long wait could have been avoided and it was such a shame to start the stay like this.

For the remainder of the stay, everyone was lovely, and I appreciated the staff member at breakfast who was more than helpful and offered to make my mum coffee with milk (like a standard Brit) even though it’s not really the Italian way! My mum said it was the best coffee she had, so high praise.

The rooms:

We didn’t stay in the hotel much, other than to sleep but it had everything we needed including a tea/ coffee station and mini fridge with complimentary water. It was super clean and the bathroom was charming!

I did stress out a bit that it looked like there was a blacked-out window in the shower, but I think like lots of places in Europe this was either a laundry shoot or similar. I couldn’t find any evidence that it was a double mirror or any of the scary things you read about as a female traveller and I concluded that it likely was just how it was built. I would prefer if they didn’t pop them in the showers though, my brain just runs wild!

I also really loved the blackout curtains! They were great, and the view of the mountains from the window was really something.

The price:

The hotel was £195 for 2 nights including breakfast. Considering Premier Inn is usually around £60-£75 per night and this was so much fancier in literally every way and included breakfast I’d say it was quite good value.

Generally speaking hotels in this area were around £300-£500 which is a lot more pricey and probably offers the same for what we needed. If I were making the decision solely based on value, I’d stay here again.

Things to consider:

• Hotel Napoleon is NOT located inside the town walls, it’s a short walk away and around a 20-minute stroll from the train station.

• The hotel is on a strip of motorway, so if this is something that bothers you, this might not be for you!

How to book:

Like most of my stays, I booked through booking.com. You can find the link to this property here.