Lucca : Italy
There are many richly built medieval basilica-form churches in Lucca with rich arcaded facades and campaniles, a few as old as the 8th century. Of the Romanesque cathedral of St Martin that was begun in 1063 by Bishop Anselm (later Pope Alexander II), the great apse with its tall columnar arcades and the fine campanile remain, the nave and transepts having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 14th century, while the west front was begun in 1204 by “Guidetto” (Guido Bigarelli of Como), and consists of a vast portico of three magnificent arches, and above them three ranges of open galleries enriched with sculpture . In the nave is a little octagonal temple or chapel shrine for the most precious of the relics of Lucca, a cedar-wood crucifix, carved, according to the legend, by Nicodemus, and miraculously conveyed to Lucca in 782. The Sacred Countenance (Volto Santo), as it is generally called, because the face of the Saviour is considered a true likeness. The chapel was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitali (1436-1501), the most famous Luccan sculptor of the early Renaissance. The tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia of Siena, the earliest of his extant works (1406), is one of the earliest works showing the incipient Renaissance.
Lucca was the largest Italian city state with a republican constitution (“commune”) to remain an independent republic over the centuries – next to Venice, of course. In 1805 Lucca was taken over by Napoleon, who put his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi in charge as Princess of Lucca. After 1815 it became a Bourbon-Parma duchy, then part of Tuscany in 1847 and finally part of the Italian State.
Unusually for cities in the region, the walls around the old town were retained intact as the city expanded and modernized. As the wide walls lost their military importance, they became a promenade ringing the old town. They are still fully intact today. The academy of sciences (1584) is the most famous of several academies and libraries.
