By Isla Quinn
Four kilometres of wall. Eleven bastions. No siege. That is what the sources say about the defences of Lucca, a city in Tuscany on the Serchio river, and it makes the walls an odd sort of monument: all that effort, and the test never arrived.
The walls
Wikipedia’s article on the Walls of Lucca says the construction campaign began on 7 May 1504 and ended in 1648, though the work did not actually start until 1513. Jacobo Seghezzi began building the current structure in 1544, and Paolo Lipparelli completed the main construction in 1645 to 1650. Those dates overlap the 1648 end of the campaign by a couple of years, and we note it without fixing it.
The article gives the circuit as 4 km and 223 m and the height as 12 metres. The materials are stone, brick and earthwork. It says the Renaissance walls used a “terrarium technique” that combined pressed earth, dried plant materials and a brick and stone outer layer. We repeat the phrase as the article gives it and do not explain it. The current walls have 11 bastions, among them San Martino, San Pietro, Santa Maria, San Donato and Santa Croce.
Why build them
The article calls them a deterrent. Lucca feared the expansionist aims of Florence, and later of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and cannon fire had made the tall, thin medieval walls inadequate, so thicker ones were needed.
Never besieged
The article says the walls have never seen military use and the city never underwent a siege. Lucca’s conflicts with the Duchy of Modena took place in the Garfagnana, not in the city itself. The only major test it records is the flood of the Serchio on 18 November 1812.
From rampart to promenade
In the 1820s, under Maria Luisa de Borbón of Spain, the article says, the structure was “converted into a pedestrian promenade and public park”. The article on the city describes the route as a pedestrian promenade, the Passeggiata delle Mure Urbane, running along the bastions and over several city gates, and says each of the four principal sides is lined with a different tree species. It also says the walls encircle the old town and remain intact, which it calls unusual for cities in this region. The two articles word the use a little differently, one adding “public park” and one not, and we report both.
Inside the walls
The city article says Lucca became a Roman colony in 180 BC and a municipium in 89 BC, and that the rectangular grid of the historic centre preserves the Roman street plan. Piazza San Michele sits on the site of the ancient forum. Piazza dell’Anfiteatro has origins in the second half of the first century AD, and the outline of the Roman amphitheatre is still visible. The Guinigi Tower is 45 metres high and dates from the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of San Martino is the city’s main church.
Silk and a composer
The article says Lucca’s prosperity came largely from a silk trade that began in the eleventh century, and that its silks came to rival those of Byzantium. “Lucca cloth” was a silk woven with gold or silver threads and was popular throughout the medieval period. Giacomo Puccini was born in the city in 1858 and died in 1924; the page names La Bohème and Madama Butterfly among his works. The composers Alfredo Catalani and Luigi Boccherini were also born there.
Dates in order
- 180 BC: Roman colony, according to Wikipedia.
- 89 BC: municipium, according to Wikipedia.
- Eleventh century: silk trade begins, according to Wikipedia.
- 7 May 1504: the construction campaign begins, according to Wikipedia.
- 1513: work actually starts, according to Wikipedia.
- 1544: Seghezzi begins the current structure, according to Wikipedia.
- 1645 to 1650: Lipparelli completes the main construction, according to Wikipedia.
- 1648: the campaign ends, according to Wikipedia.
- 1812: the flood of 18 November, the only major test recorded, according to Wikipedia.
- 1820s: the walls become a promenade under Maria Luisa, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
Both articles agree that the walls are intact and now a place to walk. They differ in small matters of wording and in the end date of the works. Our reading: a city can keep its walls whole precisely because nobody ever fought over them. That is our inference, and neither article says it.
What kind of sources these are
Two Wikipedia articles, which anyone can edit. We read no municipal, museum or tourism page, and we have left out opening hours, entry details and transport for that reason.
What we left out
We left out the population figure, which is dated 2017. We left out the article’s remark about possible earlier Ligurian traces, because its dating was unclear. We left out prices and any account of what the wall paths hold today, since we did not find a source for it.
Roam first. Shop later.