Province of Lucca
A favourable location on the plain at the foot of the first spurs of Apennines and an abundance of water seem to have been the reason for the foundation of the city by the Romans in 180 BC. The rectangular grid of its historical centre preserves the Roman street plan. Nowadays the church of San Michele, named, because of its Roman origin, San Michele in Foro, occupies the site of the ancient forum. Remains of the amphitheatre can still be seen in Piazza dell'Anfiteatro.
Lucca later underwent numerous invasions by the barbarians. In the Middle Ages its role was further increased by the opening of a new stretch of the Via Francigena, the pilgrimage route connecting Northern Europe to Rome.
As a major halting place it became a flourishing city, rich in gorgeous churches. The basic pillars on which the city built up its wealth were wool, silk and banking. Its merchant class favoured the growth of the “entrepreneurial” sector, which expanded into the main European markets thus setting off the banking business, with money loans to the great European sovereigns in need of support for the constant warfare. On the eve of the age of free communes it shared with Pisa, Florence and Siena a dominant position in the region, able to maintain its independence until the definite annexation by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the 19th century. Even Napoleon left marks in the town, bestowing it to his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi. In Tolstoy's “War and Peace” an anti-Bonapartist Russian aristocrat in St Petersbourgh recorded the events in the following way:
"Well,... Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family..... And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan, … and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions [to be annexed to France] before Monsieur Bonaparte, and Monsieur Bonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the nations?"
Today, still ringed by its massive walls, Lucca jealously guards the traces of its past, the great tradition of commerce and civic pride that is reflected in the quality of the urban fabric, studded with noble palaces and with an exceptionally high number of churches, on which every era has left its own mark. It is impossible here to describe the whole of the city's immense artistic heritage, ranging from the cathedral San Martino, San Frediano, San Michele in Foro, the Museo Nazionale Guinigi or Mansi up to the many villas in the countryside built by the merchant and banking classes. Here the magnificence of the architecture and the sumptuous symmetries of the Italian Gardens conjugate such touchstones of entertainment and confirmation of social status with the exploitation of primary products such as oil or wine, destined to have a lasting effect on the landscape. An indescribable voyage which needs to be experienced.