Deserted cities

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Staff

Please note: The original piece in Italian was written during lockdown.    Tap the screen, then tap the logo with the white ‘f’ in the blue square, look at the images. Stop and look at some of the posts that show Italian art cities, including Lucca, on Easter Monday. Video of Florence: Duomo, Baptistery, Piazza della Repubblica, Santa Maria Novella, Piazza della Signoria, the Arno River embankments. Video of Lucca: Via Fillungo, Amphitheatre, Piazza San Michele, the intersection at Via Fillungo and Via Roma. Deserted streets and squares everywhere. Only empty buses going round along their designated routes much like scale model electric toy trains moving along a track. Footage after footage, shot after shot, videos and photographs clearly show how everything seems suspended in time and underline that something important is missing: life. I look at the comments and am...

Puccini’s comment in regard to the plaque that once commemorated the place where the composer Boccherini resided in Via della Dogana

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Staff

Eleven Unusual Things to See in Lucca On the wall of the hotel, Albergo San Martino in Via della Dogana, 9, a plaque has been placed, once again, to remember where Luigi Boccherini, renowned composer of Lucca known for his famous Minuet in A, had lived for a few years of his life.  During the Fascist period, the plaque had been removed because it was considered unseemly given that the building had since become a famous house of ill repute. In fact, Giacomo Puccini, who considered Boccherini to be the most famous composer of Lucca, wrote to his sister Ramelde on 6 March 1901, commenting in proverbial Tuscan irony: “…and to think that Boccherini only has a plaque on the wall of a brothel!” Today, this comment can be read on a small commemorative plaque found just outside the entrance...

The stone known as the “Devil’s Stone” of Palazzo Bernardini

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Staff

Eleven Unusual Things to See in Lucca If you search the web for things you should see or do when visiting an area, you’ll probably find a list of the top ten things and usually they’re pretty typical. Well, I’m suggesting eleven because I’ve decided to go one better. Actually, if I were to think of all the particular places or things to see or do in Lucca, the list would be endless. But let’s begin. Palazzo Bernardini is on Via Santa Croce, one of the city’s main streets. To be precise, it stands along the route that all the pilgrims, who were passing through Lucca, would take to go to Rome. A very visible palazzo to passers-by. Rebuilt over the remains of an old medieval dwelling in the first half of the 16th century and in a decidedly...

The Keys to Lucca

Posted on May 11, 2020 by Staff

In these days of quarantine, our individual freedom has been significantly limited, but we have accepted this small sacrifice for the good of the community. In fact, if we look back in time, we will find that often the needs for protection and defense were put before the needs of the individual. I am referring to freedom of movement and controls in the days of the Republic of Lucca. The actual Walls were constructed to defend the Republic. It was a large-scale human and economic endeavor and a piece of innovative military engineering, well ahead of its time. The gates to the Walls were the weak points of this powerful defensive instrument and were considered a possible source of danger should they not be adequately protected. In the first half of the 17th century, when the walls we see today...

Animals and Monuments. In these times of Covid-19, animals unconsciously and heroically get their revenge on the human race.

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Staff

 Strange title. What do monuments have to do with animals? Well, they do, they certainly do. But first allow me to say this: Now more than ever, confined to our homes due to the pandemic, trying to satisfy our eyes and spirit with images thanks to our smart devices, we are seeing that Nature is reclaiming its space and animals are resuming their innate behavior within that space. Photos of ducks walking neatly in single file on crosswalks, safe and sound, deer crouching in the middle of freeways, wolves that venture near populated areas more than ever before. And the list goes on. And as if that weren’t enough, Spring comes along and decides to give us an abundance of days with clear blue skies. Bees, butterflies, and swallows, swoop, swirl, and do fanciful acrobatics in the sky. They...