International Camping Etruria
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Lucca
Distance from Camping Etruria - 100Km
Lucca was founded by the Etruscans (there are traces of a pre-existing Ligurian settlement) and became a Roman colony in 180 BC. The rectangular grid of its historical center preserves the Roman street plan, and the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum. Traces of the amphitheatre can still be seen in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro.
Frediano, an Irish monk, was bishop of Lucca in the early 5th century.[1] At one point, Lucca was plundered by Odoacer, the first Germanic King of Italy. Lucca was an important city and fortress even in the 6th century, when Narses besieged it for several months in 553. Under the Lombards, it was the seat of a duke who minted his own coins. The Holy Face of Lucca (or Volto Santo), a major relic supposedly carved by Nicodemus, arrived in 742. It became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the 11th century, and came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the 10-11th centuries Lucca was the capital of the feudal margravate of Tuscany, more or less independent but owing nominal allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor.
Di conseguenza anche il centro storico monumentale della città è rimasto pressochè intatto nel suo aspetto originario, potendo dunque annoverare svariate architetture di pregio, come le numerosissime chiese medievali di notevole ricchezza architettonica (Lucca è stata addirittura soprannominata la "città dalle 100 chiese", proprio per la presenza di numerose chiese nel suo nucleo storico, consacrate e non, presenti in passato ed ora in città), torri e campanili, e monumentali palazzi rinascimentali di pregevole linearità stilistica.
Lucca was the second largest Italian city state (after Venice) with a republican constitution ("comune") to remain independent over the centuries.
In 1805, Lucca was taken over by Napoleon, who put his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi in charge as "Queen of Etruria". This affair is commemorated in the famous first sentence of Tolstoy's War and Peace:
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Bonapartes.(...) And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan, the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions [to be annexed to France] before Monsieur Bonaparte, and Monsieur Bonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the nations?" (spoken by a thoroughly anti-Bonapartist Russian aristocrat, soon after the news reached St. Petersburg).
Lucca is the birthplace of composers Giacomo Puccini (La bohème and Madama Butterfly), Francesco Geminiani, Gioseffo Guami, Luigi Boccherini, and Alfredo Catalani. It is also the birthplace of Bruno Menconi and artist Benedetto Brandimarte.
Lucca annually hosts the Lucca Summer Festival. The 2006 edition saw Eric Clapton, Placebo, Massive Attack, Roger Waters, Tracy Chapman and Santana play live in the Piazza Napoleone.
Lucca also hosts the annual Lucca Comics and Games festival, Italy's largest festival for comics and related subjects.
Source: Wikipedia
