[2] Lugo is the only city in the world to be surrounded by completely intact Roman walls, which reach a height of 10 to 15 metres (33 to 49 feet) along a 2,117-metre (6,946 ft) circuit ringed with 71 towers.

The outline of the city was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO on 7 November 2002, this being the most important recognition at international level regarding the conservation of landscapes and habitats of this Atlantic European region.

Due to its remoteness from the Atlantic, its annual precipitation of 1,084 millimetres (42.7 in) can be considered low compared with areas of the Rias Baixas and Santiago de Compostela.

The Conventus Lucensis, according to Pliny, began at the river Navilubio, and contained 16 peoples; besides the Celtici and Lebuni.

10th-century attempts at rebuilding its casas destructas (abandoned tenements) suggest that it remained a town only on paper: the seat of a bishopric, administered by a count, from which royal charters were issued.

[13] During the Middle Ages Lugo, like Santiago de Compostela, was a center of pilgrimage, because the cathedral had the special privilege, which it still retains today, of exposing to the public the consecrated host twenty-four hours a day.

In the 1970s the city undertook important reforms, like the development of the Ceao Industrial Area (1979) and the complete restoration of the Roman walls.

Infanta Elena, the elder daughter of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain and fourth in the line of succession to the Spanish throne, has been duchess of Lugo since 1995.

The main activities are commercial, the administration (offices of the autonomous and central Governments) and educational and health services (the recently opened Hospital Universitario Lucus Augusti is the largest in Galicia).

Industry is scarce and almost exclusively dedicated to the processing of agricultural products (dairy, meat, timber ...).

There is a shopping center on the outskirts of the city (As Termas), with an Eroski hypermarket, cinemas, clothing stores like H&M, NewYorker or Cortefiel and many restaurants and fast food chains like McDonald's.

There is a private aerodrome in the nearby town of Rozas, owned by the Spanish Ministry of Defence and administered by Real Aero Club de Lugo.

In 2011, the Ministry of Defence transferred the installations to INTA, Spain's space agency, in order to convert it into a center of aeronautical research,[16] Lugo is the only city in the world to be surrounded by completely intact Roman walls, which reach a height of 10 to 15 metres along a 2117 m circuit ringed with 71 towers.