Lovely Word, Dream Address

LUCCA

This city is one of Tuscany's well kept secret. The picturesque fortress town is steeped in history; it was here that Caesar, POMPEII and Crassus agreed to rule Rome as a triumvirate in 56 B.C. Later LUCCA was the first town that accepted Christianity. In the middle ages the city fell to Florence and during the French invasion Napoleon made LUCCA a Municipality and gave it to his sister Elisa whose name is still connected with a number of buildings and sites.

About Lucca...

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 S. Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum.Plundered by Odoacer, Lucca appears as an important city and fortress at the time of Narses. It became prosperous through the silk trade that got a start in the 11th century, to rival the silks of Byzantium. In the 10th and 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.For almost 500 years, Lucca was an independent republic. Dante's Divine Comedy include many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante himself spent some of his exile in Lucca. Under masterly tyranny of Castruccio Castracani it became for a moment a leading state of central Italy, rival to Florence, until his death in 1328. Castracani's tomb is in the church of San Francesco. His biography is Machiavelli's third famous book on political rule.Lucca was the seat of a convocation in 1408 that was intended to end the schism in the papacy. "Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, sold to a rich Genoese Gherardino Spinola, seized by John, king of Bohemia, pawned to the Rossi of Parma, by them ceded to Martino della Scala of Verona, sold to the Florentines, surrendered to the Pisans, nominally liberated by the emperor Charles IV. and governed by his vicar, Lucca managed, at first as a democracy, and after 1628 as an oligarchy, to maintain its independence alongside of Venice and Genoa, and painted the word Libertas on its banner till the French Revolution" (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911).

Não irei junto... mas assim que se estiver instalado prometo visitar !

THE RIGHT MOVE FOR YOU, LEÃOZINHO ! ;-)