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IBLEI NETWORK   Lucca Tourism.eu The city of Lucca (Tuscany). Useful information, photo gallery, churches, the walls, monuments and more... Tuscany Bed & Breakfast.eu The Bed and Breakfast of the Tuscany orders by province Tuscany Farm Holidays.eu The Farm Holidays of the Tuscany orders by province Hotels in Tuscany.eu The Hotels of the Tuscany orders by province Tuscany Tourism.eu Touristic portal about Tuscany. Bed & Breakfast, Farm Holidays, useful informations...and more... Palazzolo Acreide The city of Palazzolo Acreide (Siracusa). Useful information, baroque photo gallery, churches and more... Akrai The archaeological site of Akrai, city founded by the Greeks of Siracusa in the 664 a.C. Palazzolo Acreide (SR) House-museum of Antonino Uccello Informative website about the ethnoantropologist Antonino Uccello and virtual visit of the House-museum of Palazzolo Acreide (SR) IBLEI.it Touristic portal website about Siracusa and Ragusa. Archaeological, ethnoantropological, historical, artistic, naturalistic route Late baroque towns of the Val di Noto (South eastern Sicily) World Heritage List UNESCO The eight towns in south-eastern Sicily: Caltagirone, Militello Val di Catania, Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo Acreide, Ragusa and Scicli. The towns of the Val di Noto represent the culmination and final flowering of Baroque art in Europe Sicily Bed & Breakfast.it The Bed and Breakfast of the Sicily orders by province Centro Studi Iblei Documentation centre about Antonino Uccello, the Iblei area and the province of Siracusa and Ragusa The sites of the peasant's work. Buscemi-Palazzolo Acreide Intermunicipal ethnical-anthropological itinerary Italian ethnoantropological museums Portal website about ethnoantropologic museums in Italy Caltagirone's ceramics Located in the historical centre of Palazzolo Acreide, in this store you can buy various ceramics and terracotta objects Italian Chairs Italian chairs for home, office, contract

 

 

 

Lucca is a city in Tuscany, northern central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plain near (but not on) the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca.

HISTORY

Ancient and medieval city

Lucca was founded by the Etruscans (there are traces of a pre-existing Ligurian settlement) and became a Roman colony in 180 BC. The rectangular grid of its historical center preserves the Roman street plan, and the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum.

LUCCA - The walls

Plundered by Odoacer, Lucca appears as an important city and fortress at the time of Narses, who besieged it for three months in 553, and under the Lombards it was the seat of a duke who minted his own coins. It became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the 11th century, and came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the 10-11th centuries Lucca was the capital of the feudal margravate of Tuscany, more or less independent but owing nominal allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor.

LUCCA - St Martin Cathedral
St Martin and the poor (Sec. XIII)

After the death of the famous Matilda of Tuscany, the city began to constitute itself an independent commune, with a charter of 1160. For almost 500 years, Lucca remained an independent republic. There were many minor feudatories in the region between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany dominated by the Malaspina; Tuscany in this time was a part of feudal Europe. Dante’s Divine Comedy include many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante himself spent some of his exile in Lucca.

In the common central Italian pattern, internal discord afforded an opportunity in 1314 to Uguccione della Faggiuola to make himself master of Lucca, but the Lucchesi expelled him two years afterwards, and handed over their city to the condottiere Castruccio Castracani, under whose masterly tyranny it became for a moment a leading state of central Italy, rival to Florence, until his death in 1328. On 22 and 23 September 1325, in the battle of Altopascio, he defeated again Florence's Guelphs, taking many prisoners and also for this he was nominated by Louis IV the Bavarian, duke of Lucca. Castracani's tomb is in the church of San Francesco. His biography is Machiavelli's third famous book on political rule.

In 1408 Lucca hosted the convocation intended to end the schism in the papacy. Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich Genoese Gherardino Spinola, then seized by John, king of Bohemia. Pawned to the Rossi of Parma, by them it was ceded to Martino della Scala of Verona, sold to the Florentines, surrendered to the Pisans, nominally liberated by the emperor Charles IV. and governed by his vicar, Lucca managed, at first as a democracy, and after 1628 as an oligarchy, to maintain its independence alongside of Venice and Genoa, and painted the word Libertas on its banner till the French Revolution" (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911).

Republic of Lucca

Lucca was the second largest Italian city state (after Venice) with a republican constitution ("comune") to remain independent over the centuries. In 1805 Lucca was taken over by Napoleon, who put his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi in charge as "Queen of Etruria". This affair is commemorated in the famous first sentence of Tolstoy's "War and Peace":

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.(...) And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan, the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions [to be annexed to France] before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the nations?" (spoken by a throughly anti-Boanapartist Russian aritstocrat, soon after the news reached St. Petersburg).

After 1815 it became a Bourbon-Parma duchy, then part of Tuscany in 1847 and finally part of the Italian State. Lucca is twinned with the English market town of Abingdon, near Oxford.

MAIN SIGHTS

Unusual for cities in the region, the walls around the old town were retained intact as the city expanded and modernized. As the wide walls lost their military importance, they became a pedestrian promenade ringing the old town although they were used for a number of years in the 20th century for racing cars. They are still fully intact today; each of the four principal sides is lined with a different tree species.

The academy of sciences (1584) is the most famous of several academies and libraries.

The Casa di Puccini is open to the public. At nearby Torre del Lago there is a Puccini opera festival every year in July/August. Puccini had a house there.

There are many richly built medieval basilica-form churches in Lucca with rich arcaded facades and campaniles, a few as old as the 8th century.

Cathedral of St. Martin

Construction of the Romanesque Cathedral of St Martin in Lucca, Italy, was begun in 1063 by Bishop Anselm (later Pope Alexander II). Of this structure, the great apse with its tall columnar arcades and the fine campanile remain.

The nave and transepts having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 14th century, while the west front was begun in 1204 by "Guidetto" (Guido Bigarelli of Como), and consists of a vast portico of three magnificent arches, and above them three ranges of open galleries enriched with sculpture.

In the nave a little octagonal temple or chapel shrine contains the most precious relic in Lucca, the Volto Santo or Sacred Countenance. This cedar-wood crucifix and image of Christ, according to the legend, carved by his contemporary Nicodemus, and miraculously conveyed to Lucca in 782. Christ is clothed in the colobium, a long sleeveless garment. The chapel was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitali (1436-1501), the most famous Luccan sculptor of the early Renaissance.

The tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia of Siena, the earliest of his extant works (1406), is an early Renaissance masterpiece.

Additionally the cathedral contains a Ghirlandaio Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, Clement, Paul and Sebastian; a Federico Zuccari Adoration of Magi, a Jacopo Tintoretto Last supper, and finally a Fra Bartolomeo Madonna and Child (1509).

St Frediano Church

The Basilica of San Frediano is a Romanesque church in Lucca, Italy, situated on the Piazza San Frediano.

Frediano was the Irish bishop of Lucca in the first half of the 6th century. He had a church built on this spot, dedicated to St. Vincent (It.: San Vincenzo), a martyr from Saragossa, Spain. When Frediano was buried in this church, the church was renamed Ss. Frediano and Vincenzo. Soon afterwards, a community of Augustinian canons was growing around this church. In the Longobard era, the church and the Canon House were enlarged. In 1104, this order was recognized by pope Paschal II. The prior of St. Frediano was later accorded a rank equal in dignity to that of a bishop.

The church acquired its present appearance of a typical Roman basilica during the period 1112-1147. In the 13th-14th centuries the striking façade was decorated with a huge golden 13th century mosaic representing The Ascension of Christ the Saviour with the apostles below. Berlinghiero Berlinghieri designed it in a Byzantine/medieval style.

Several chapels of the nobility were added in the 14th-16th centuries. These are lavishly decorated with paintings.

Inside, the basilica is built in richly carved white marble. It consists of a nave and two aisles with arches supported by columns with Roman and Romanesque capitals. The Roman capitals were recycled from the nearby Roman amphitheatre.

The highlight at the entrance is the huge 12th century Romanesque baptismal font (the Fonte Lustrale). It is composed of a bowl, covered with a tempietto, resting on pillars, inside a circular basin. It is the craftmanship of master Roberto (his signature is on the basin) and two unknown masters. The basin is decorated with The Story of Moses by a Lombard sculptor. Master Roberto did the last two panels The Good Shepherd and the Six Prophets. The tempietto was sculpted by a Tuscan master, representing the months of the year and the apostles.

Behind this font, higher on the wall, are two 15th century glazed terracotta lunettes : The Annunciation and St. Bartholomew, both attributed to the school of Andrea della Robbia.

There is another baptismal font, still in use, carved and adapted from a sacramental altar by Matteo Civitali in 1489.

The counterfaçade houses the 16th century organ in the exquisitely carved. gold-plated choir from the 17th century.

On the right hand is the side chapel of St. Zita (1218-1278), a popular saint in Lucca. Her intact mummified body, lying on a bed of brocade, is on display in a glass shrine. On the walls of the chapel are several canvasses from the 16th and 17th century depicting episodes from her life.

The remains of St. Frediano lie underneath the main altar from the 16th century. A massive stone monolith stands left of the main altar. This was probably pilfered from the amphiteatre of Lucca. But local tradition has it that it was miraculously transported to Lucca by San Frediano and used as a predella (step of an altar) for the first altar.

The Trenta chapel in the left aisle houses the polyptych of the Virgin and the Child, a 15th century masterpiece by Jacopo della Quercia, carved with the help of his assistant Giovanni da Imola. Below the altar is a Roman sarcophagus with the body of St. Richard, an English “king”, who died in Lucca in 722 while on pilgrimage to Rome. On the marble floor lies a tombstone of Lorenzo Trenta and his wife, equally from the hand of Jacopo della Quercia.

Among the many chapels, the chapel of the Cross certainly stands out. It contains frescoes, recently restored, by Amico Aspertini (1508-1509). The blue vault shows us God surrounded by angels, prophets and sibyls. Above the altar is an anonymous 17th century painting representing Volto Santo, St. Augustine and St. Ubaldo. On the right wall is the fresco of St. Frediano displacing the course of the river Serchio, while trying to stop the flooding. Next to it is a column which is, at closer sight, actually flat. The sgraffiti are drawn in the art technique of trompe l’oeil, giving a false perspective and the illusion of a column. On the left wall is the fresco of the Transportation of the Volto Santo from the port of Luni to Lucca by the Blessed Giovanni, bishop of Lucca. In the front the stooping old lady in red robe certainly steals the show. The mortal remains of this bishop are preserved in this chapel.

The chapel of St. Anne was constructed in the 16th century, but the paintings date from the 19th century. On the left side of the altar : Death of St. Anna by B. Rocchi. In the middle , above the altar, St. Anna Adores the Child by S. Tonfanelli. On the right side of the altar : Birth of Mary by A. Cecchi.

Botanical Garden

The Orto Botanico Comunale di Lucca is a botanical garden located at Via del Giardino Botanico, 14, Lucca, Italy, and operated by the city. It is open daily during the warmer months, and weekday mornings off-season. An admission fee is charged.

The garden was established in 1820 by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, and contains a number of mature plantings of botanical interest. Its site is roughly triangular, set within a corner of Lucca's city wall, and organized into two main sections. One contains the gardens proper with an arboretum, pond, and smaller plantings; the other contains the greenhouse, botanical school, and laboratories. The Museo Botanico "Cesare Bicchi" contains a herbarium and archive.

Pfanner Palace

Palazzo Pfanner is a palace and gardens in Lucca, now converted into a museum of art and artifacts. The palazzo dates to 1667, and is notable mainly for its fine garden, attributed to Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736), and an interesting external stairway with loggia. Its principal salon contains frescoes by Scorsini and De Santi (early to mid 1700s), as well as a collection of surgical instruments gathered by Dr. Pietro Pfanner (1864-1935).

From: WIKIPEDIA