Sunday morning in Lucca. We are taking a morning passeggiata, a walk with no particular goal except looking for everyday life in a foreign place, as we always do. Small Italian towns and villages repeatedly surprise me with their liveliness- it was a rainy morning, but still, the locals were there, active. I observed a nicely dressed grandpa, suit and all, buying the newspaper at a local kiosk, dog owners under the umbrellas, people stopping to have a chat with their neighbors, acquaintances, whatever their connection was. Bars, discreetly filled with locals taking their morning coffee. We too wanted to be a part of that ‘everyday’ day in Lucca. So we walked, talked, observed, entered an old-style grocery with a grandma behind the counter, and an enviable offer of her homemade pasta- mostly ravioli, with different sorts of fillings, the kind of offer that doesn’t exist anywhere back home, let alone in a small shop coming from another time. We chose zucca, or pumpkin, and got the advice of not to put anything on them except butter and parmigiano, and perhaps sage. We prepared them for dinner that evening in Padova which was our stop on the way home.
The evening before, we were at a concert just outside the city walls, a Rolling Stones concert that was actually a reason for our visiting the town. It was a nice setting and terrible Italian organization that obviously sold too many tickets for a limited space. When we leisurely arrived just in time for the concert, there weren’t any weak spots in a thick mass of people, so that we could approach the “auditorium” in any way. Luka was prone of demonstratively going back to our apartment, I managed to find a crevice between people eventually, from where Luka could partially see the stage and I could partially see the monitors which had to be good enough.
What excites me the most about the big concerts in Italy, is the atmosphere on the streets before the concert. The center of Lucca was full of people in Rolling Stones’ shirts, the shops were displaying lyrics in their shop windows, the bars were playing their music, and all the local newspapers made the concert their headline. I enjoyed both the atmosphere and the concert and grew unexpectedly (or expectedly) fond of Lucca.
We rented an apartment, which was really an old stone farmhouse (lovingly furnished but badly kept, cold in September as well) about 6 kilometers out of the city and into the hills. In front of the house was a wellspring where people would stop day and night to fill their bottles and canisters with water, and on the night of the concert, we saw a giant, beautiful dark brown wild boar by the side of the road. It all felt very rustic and, well, Tuscan.
Lucca charmed us with its layered, onion-like structure of medieval walls encircling the city center, and then at the heart of the city, the oval main square, the Piazza dell’ Anfiteatro, that was a Roman amphitheater once, whose arches are still visible in the outside walls of the present buildings. Even though peculiar and extraordinary, a place where gladiators fought some 20 centuries ago, the piazza today is a modest, lively, but not at all crowded public space with a couple of bars and simple, non-extravagant shops. In the center of the square stands a large-scale sculpture of a human head by Polish artist Igor Mitoraj, the same one that made a sculpture of laying Icarus in front of the Temple of Concordia in Agrigento, that we visited some years before. Mitoraj was best known for his fragmented sculptures of the human body, largely inspired by classical sculpture. I read later that he lived and worked in Pietrasanta, a small town about half an hour’s drive from Lucca, known for its marble quarries where Michelangelo used to take the marble from for his sculptures, and today known as an art town filled with galleries, workshops and public sculptures. Even more interesting, it’s off the tourist radar. Our host mentioned the town, but our stay in Lucca was too short to head in that direction- however, I encourage you to visit, I know we will next time we found ourselves in Tuscany.
We mostly discovered Lucca by walking around in circles between the Piazza dell’Anfitearo and medieval city walls, stopping when we felt like a place was worth entering. This is how we noticed the Torre Guinigi, a medieval tower with 5 live oaks on top of it! Apparently, it belonged to noble Guinigi family that used the rooftop as a kitchen garden (how farsighted!), and during the medieval times it was one of around 250 towers inside the city walls- now, only 9 are left. The view from up there spans the Tuscan hills in the distance, the cathedral, its tower, and the other still existing towers as the vertical anchors of the city, but the dominant motive is the Italian orange roof, actually a sea of them, sometimes gathered so closely that the streets appear like crevices in the earth.
We visited the medieval cathedral of San Martino, and even more impressive- the basilica of San Michele in Foro, its name derived from its location on top of the ancient Roman forum. The upper part of its marvelous facade is completely carved, with no blank space left, made out of neat rows of arcades, covering small loggias. Looking closely, you notice that each column of those arcades is different- made in white, red, green, black, pink, or grey marble, with different inlays and patterns, geometric or organic, some of them carved in animal shapes, some in decorative whorls, and some smooth. Like a delicate filigree work on a large scale.
The further walk took us to a quiet square with a sculpture of Luigi Boccherini, one of the most important cello composers, who was (as we found out then) born in Lucca in 1743. As the author of a concert I played at my final exam at the music school, and the author of an even more beautiful concert that I also played, but with less success- I grew fond of Boccherini. It felt like seeing the sculpture of an old friend, and I had to take a photo with it.
Finally, we took a walk on top of the medieval defense walls, planted with trees during Napoleon’s government (I have to check what was it with Napoleon and planting trees, this isn’t the first time I hear this). The walls, first built by the Romans and then subsequently renovated and expanded during the medieval times, remained almost unchanged since the last, late-Renaissance renovation. Since Napoleon’s times, the walls have been used as public gardens and a promenade, encircling the entire town in about 4 kilometers length. On the afternoon we visited the walls were buzzing with joggers, cyclists, families, and groups of friends- a perfect place to experience every day in Lucca.
I thought of Lucca many times after, two scenes engraved in my memory: the wild boar by the side of the road and the elegantly dressed older man buying newspapers on a Sunday morning. Interesting how some scenes, without an obvious reason, become an important part of your memory of a place.
Recommendations:
On our last evening in town, we accidentally found a restaurant called Osteria dal Manzo, that had good food, lovely interior and charming choice of serving plates (all colorful and handmade in Italy).
On the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, there is a cool local shop called Uashmama- a Tuscan, family-owned brand of washable paper bags. Of course, there were some fresh soap bars and things for the home in the shop, but the bags are both nicely crafted and contemporary, and upon first glance, one would never guess they’re made of paper.
Lucca has a number of nice, quality stores selling leather bags, Made in Tuscany. The prices seemed down to earth, compared to the hand made items in Florence- and I ended up with a bag I wear most of the time, for all occasions. :)
If anyone has any other Lucca recommendations, please share them in the comments!
More posts about Tuscany: here, here and here.
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Anja
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Two summers ago, between a couple of days spent in our dear Padova, and a week on our dear Marettimo, we squeezed in a day trip to Bologna, a little more than an hour’s drive from Padova.