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Distances from the main nearby town
Florence (60 km)
Pisa (20 Km)
Siena (120 Km)
5 Terre
Forte dei Marmi (20 Km)
Viareggio (30 Km)
Golf court (6 km)
Lucca historical overview
The origins of Lucca are not very well known; the town was probably founded in pre-roman times in a marshy area near Bientina lake.
Lucca was ruled by the Ligurians and the Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180 B.C.; in 89 B.C. Lucca was proclaimed “municipium” and in 56 B.C. was the site of the conference of Cesar, Pompeo and Crasso which led to the Triumvirate.
Thanks to its lucky geographical position Lucca used to be a very important road junction; both the via Cassia and the via Francigena, which connected Rome with France, used to cross the town.
When the Roman empire fell, Lucca was invaded by the Goths and then by the Lombards, under whom the town enjoyed a very thriving era. There is little evidence of the Carolingian era till the 10th century, when Lucca became an important feud of the Marquisate of Tuscany.
Thanks to its strong walls Lucca avoided the Hungarian invasion in 940 whereas in 1004 the town fought against Pisa and accepted to be ruled by Henry III rather than to surrender to the Canossa family. During the fight between the Empire and the Papacy Lucca remained always faithful to the Emperor and this got the town huge advantages.
In 1118 Lucca turned itself into a commune and became the capital of one of the three Duchies across Tuscany. Thanks to its citizens’ inventiveness, to the production and trade of silk and to thriving bank activities, in this era Lucca experienced wealth and great artistic and cultural development. Indeed, Lucca was one the first towns to coin money and its merchants pushed themselves across Europe.
Lucca experienced hard times when Pope Gregory IX excommunicated the Emperor who the town had always been faithful to. The excommunication caused the town to lose its diocese and to surrender unconditionally to Pisa and Florence in 1234. In 1314 fights between Guelphs and Ghibellines led to Lucca Uguccione della Faggiola from Pisa, a Ghibelline tyrant, from whom the town was set free by Castruccio Castracani. Despite his despotic rule, he encouraged the development of the economy.
In 1369 Lucca eventually regained its freedom from the emperor Charles IV and became a Republic.
Between 1400 and 1430 the town was ruled despotically by Paolo Guinigi; then, the most powerful families of the town ruled, whose misgovernment caused silk workers to rise against the regime in 1534, in a riot that is remembered as the “rivolta degli straccioni” (literally the protest of beggars, because of a black cloth in shreds the protesters carried while marching). During the age of the counter-reformation, a large part of the ruling class joined the Lutheranism and the Calvinism. Lucca avoided the invasion of the Medici family just because the town conformed to the Council of Trent, which allowed Lucca to maintain its freedom.
Then Lucca lived quite peacefully for two centuries.
In 1805 Napoleon turned Lucca into a principality and put the town into the hands of his sister Elisa. After Napoleon’ s fall the principality was under the rule of the Murat family and then under the Austrians.
In 1817 the Congress of Vienna turned Lucca into a Duchy and assigned it the House of Bourbon of Parma led by the Duchess Marie Louise; after her death, her son Carlo Ludovico of Bourbon stepped over and ruled the Duchy for 23 years; then, in 1847, it was ceded to Leopold II of Tuscany.
In 1860 Lucca became part of the Italian kingdom.
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