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...

The Poems of Geppe

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Staff

I’d like to continue to speak about a tourist guide’s tools of the trade. The more you have filed away the better, therefore knowing something about literature and poetry can come in handy. Today, I’m going to talk about something a bit more particular, poetry written in the vernacular of Lucca. This is a difficult subject to broach with visitors, albeit Italian, because the regions of Italy have many different dialects, or perhaps it might be more appropriate to say, different languages. I was born in Milan, my mother’s surname was Bassetti, and when I was twelve, I had to change ‘language’ and become ‘Lucchese (1) ’ very quickly. I must admit that I haven’t been able to change the way I pronounce ‘s’ so when I say certain words, my northern Italian accent seeps through. However, my father,...

A Tourist Guide Who Also Knows His Way Around a Kitchen! Seafood Spaghetti with Mussels and Clams

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Staff

In Spring, Italians love strolling by the beautiful seashores close to their towns to soak in those first rays of warm sunshine. This year, however, we are all locked inside our homes because of Covid-19. Do you think we spend the long boring days watching tv or washing our cars? Reading books? Or, heaven forbid, exercising? No! We are cooking and preparing the most delectable meals. Even if I’m not the ‘MasterChef’ of my family (my father, mother, and in particular, my grandmothers were wonderful cooks), I know how to survive in difficult times like these. So thinking about the seaside and the warm sunshine, I’d like to share with you a simple, but very tasty dish of pasta with seafood: Pasta allo scoglio with mussels and clams. Scoglio are the rocks in the sea. When you mix the seafood sauce with the spaghetti, the...

Pompeo Batoni? A ‘homespun’ analysis of a Lucchese painting

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Staff

My last post was dedicated to the diary of the painter Georg Christoph Martini. In it, I stated that it was probable that Georg had been a teacher to the young painter Pompeo Girolamo Batoni of Lucca. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Batoni was the most celebrated and famous Italian painter of portraits and allegorical and mythological subjects of the 18th century. Batoni was born in Lucca on 25 January 1708 and died in Rome in February 1787. In Rome, the Eternal City, he mastered the art of painting and was bestowed with many honors and accolades, and most certainly great sums of money based on the numerous and pressing requests he received for his paintings by noblemen, princes, and wealthy international and national merchants. In his workshop, located in Via del Leone, the apprentices labored to follow...

A precious book by Georg Christoph Martini

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Staff

I started this series of brief articles by explaining why I chose to become a tourist guide. Leaving aside sentiment and rhetoric dictated by the moment, I’d like to present to you some of the sources of my modest, yet handy, knowledge. My library for example.  Two plain sets of shelves, purchased at IKEA, similar to what you find in households everywhere.  It is packed with books stacked double file, almost all of them regarding the history and territory of Lucca. There is one that is especially dear to me and I’d like to tell you about it.  It was written by Georg Christoph Martini, an 18th-century painter and chronicler, during a trip to Tuscany. My copy is a second edition published by Maria Pacini Fazzi and is a fount of information regarding life and society in 18th-century Lucca....

A Tourist Guide Trapped at Home

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Staff

When people become professional tourist guides in Italy, some do it out of necessity, some do it as a part-time job, some do it while waiting for their ‘dream’ job to materialize. I’ve been at this profession for over thirty years for pure vocation and because I’m passionate about it. Perhaps too passionate, seeing how my family is always nagging me because I put my work ahead of household duties or personal fun. Maybe they’re right but my job is part of my life. Whenever I run into a certain old friend of mine while I’m working, he yells out, “You’re always in the streets, talking, talking, talking!!! Don’t you ever work??” And possibly, he’s right. I love my job. It’s great fun. It’s not a burden at all. In these dramatic times, when not only Italy but the...

A Ghost Town…for Now

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Staff

We have never lived in times like these.  In a matter of days, actually hours, the virus called coronavirus or Covid-19 has changed the life of every single Italian. When the elderly, like our parents/grandparents, were children, they lived through times of war, strife, and hunger. This too is a war, but against a deviously underhanded and invisible enemy that has insinuated anguish and uncertainty into our lives. The streets and squares are deserted.  The shops are shut.  People are locked away in their homes, small or large, ugly or beautiful. Even the grand historical buildings, which we talk about passionately on a daily basis, seem not to exist anymore.  They’ve disappeared from our minds and have been replaced with bigger fears and problems.  The buildings are now dormant, awaiting our return.  And looking around, we realize that this...

Camellias and their Surroundings

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Staff

Spring is in the air. The countryside of Lucca is characterized by the elegant, variegated and multicolored camellias in full bloom. In these days, the ancient villas of Lucca used to open their gates to their remarkable ‘secret’ gardens to welcome lovers of art, architecture, history, and beauty, including the spectacular Villa Reale of Marlia (recently restored) and the exquisite Villa Torrigiani of Camigliano, both of which have extraordinary camellia plant collections. Castelvecchio di Compito and Pieve di Compito are picturesque hamlets located just twenty minutes away from Lucca, immersed in olive groves with small babbling brooks of spring water, descending from the Monti Pisani (Pisan Hills). The residents of this area have transformed their private gardens, big and small, and communal areas into an authentic and unique park where the Camellia, in every shape, form, and color, is...

The tombstone dedicated to Adele in the cloister of the convent of the Church of San Francesco (Saint Francis)

Posted on February 28, 2020 by admin

The three cloisters of the Convent of the Church of San Francesco (Saint Francis) were recently restored and are part of the IMT University campus. They are open to the public. The entrance is on the left hand side of the church. Along the walls of the cloisters are many 19th-century tombstones of the upper middle class of Lucca. It is interesting to read the epitaphs engraved on the stones commemorating those buried. Many of the deceased were in their twenties and many others were children. After the twentieth stone, there is a very particular inscription. Those that battle for gender equality will either be filled with indignation or have a good chuckle. AGNESE RAGGHIANTI BORN LUCCHESI TO HER MOST BELOVED SISTER ADELE SHE POSSESSED ALL THE BEST MORAL QUALITIES AND WAS MORE INTELLIGENT THAN OTHERS OF HER GENDER...

The replica of the Holy House of Our Lady of Loreto in the Church of Santa Maria Nera

Posted on February 7, 2020 by admin

The Church of Santa Maria Nera2 owes its name to the presence of a black-colored sculpture of the Holy Virgin Mary, made in the 19th century. It is an identical reproduction of Our Lady of Loreto3. Our Lady of Loreto is located inside a Marian shrine, by the same name, in the town of Loreto in the Marche region. Legend says that the Holy House of Mary was transported in flight by angels from Nazareth to Loreto and the shrine was built around it. In 1662 in Lucca, the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God4 had an exact copy of the Holy House built inside the Romanesque church of Santa Maria Corteorlandini, which is richly decorated with 17th-century frescoes representing scenes from Mary’s life. The 19th-century statue of the ‘black’ Madonna was placed inside the house which stands...