Thursday, 19 October, Lucca, Grand Universe

Written 21 February 2024

Thursday morning, after another lovely breakfast in the conservatory, I had a little time to explore the hotel's cozy lobby library. Guests are encouraged to take books to read during their stay and to leave any books they brought with them but have finished with.

As we strolled back to the bus for our leisurely 9 am departure for Lucca, I got a last shot of the hotel's beautiful courtyard arboretum.

We also walked past the outside entrance to its restaurant, Pantagruel, complete with image of the character himself.

Anna spent our time in the bus to tell us more about Umbria and Perugia. The University of Perugia is famous for its College of Law, and many lawyers live in the area. Its School of Fine Arts is also well known. Many of the artists who painted the Sistine chapel (it has walls, as well as a ceiling) came from here, including Pietro Perugino.

The city has a Medieval center and even some Etruscan remnants. Most of what's known of the Etruscans comes from their cemeteries, but Perugia has some nonfunerary things, like an arch.

Anna herself attended the university's courses for foreigners, to improve her Italian accent. She studied history of Italian cinema, Medieval art, and history of opera, all taught in Italian. She spent lots of time in the language labs, and even did workshops twice a week with the Cordon Bleu.

The region produces some rape-seed oil and some sunflowers (for oil) but a great deal of olive oil. Spain is world's largest producer, Italy second, and Greece is third. Monin is Italy's largest producer. Olives bloom in May, to the dismay of the many poeple (including Anna) who are allergic to the pollen. The harvest begins somewhere between October and January, depending on the location. Olives trees start to produce at age 4 (which is contrary to the old folk wisdom I learned in school, which was that no one ever harvested olives from a tree he planted himself), and they tend to alternate heavy and light crop years. The consensus seems ot be that the best pruning method is the "chalice" shape, but it's newfangled and only slowly being adopted.

According to Anna, eating an olive right off the tree is an experience you'll remember for the rest of your life—the bitterness will burn itself into your lasting memories. To be edible whole, olives must be cured by one of several methods. Anna home cures her own. She puts them in an old, empty water bottle, fills it with seawater, and changes the water every two days for a month.

For oil, you must pick them and press them ASAP; minutes count! They're ground, pits and all, and put into a mesh sleeve, which is then pressed. The oil is then centrifuged to remove water, and the acidity of the oil is measured. If it's less than 0.08% acid, it can be called virgin olive oil. The quality decreases with each subsequent pressing, but everything is used—the fourth and fifth pressings have industrial uses, and the residual pulp can be used as fertilizer. You should apparently look for the word "pure" on the label; it signifies that the acidity has not been chemically manipulated. Adding heat during the pressing process raises acidity.

Unfortunately, this was a bad year for olives, the second in a row, so the price of olive oil has gone way up; last year it was a bug, this year, weather.

To reduce the regions dependence on agricultural products, the government has begun promoting agritourism, initially at least for local, Italian tourists. Apparently the local knitting group or Little League team will have their parties, celebrations, and gatherings at an agritourism site.

About half an hour out from Posta Donini, we came to Lake Trasimeno, and the bus driver did a small detour to show us some of the lake shore. It's the fourth largest lake in Italy and the cleanest, but it is endorheic; it has no natural (above-ground) outlet (but artificial canals now connect it to the Tiber). As a result, like the Great Salt Lake, it's saltier than most inland lakes (though not as salty as the GSL). It's nevertheless surrounded by very fertile lands.

Eels from the lake are a culinary specialty here. But did they have eels before the canals were dug? How did they get to the sea and back to reproduce? Now, though, they're too popular and are getting rare, despite efforts to restock them. Another specialty is Louisana crawfish, which were introduced to control mosquitoes. Unfortunately, the crawfish wouldn't eat Italian mosquitoes, so now they have crawfish and mosquitos. You'd think they'd have checked that out in the lab ahead of time. The lake has been known to freeze over, but usually doesn't.

The right-hand photo is a particularly picturesque view of the countryside. The trees on the hillsides are olives.

Perugia is also famous for candy making. Anna passed around a bag of the well-known dome-shaped, foil-wrapped "Baci" ("kiss") candies, wich are made here. A company called Venchi even makes chocolate for diabetics.

She also showed us a photo of another specialty of the area: a pastry with short crust, filled with marzipan, and formed in the shape of an eel (by someone who's never seen an eel with the skin on—they don't have scales).

Finally, she talked about another specialty, a confection called panforte. It apparently originally developed from a sort of long-keeping Medieval power bar—the name literally means "strong bread." It has drifted farther and farther from being actual bread; today's version typically contains no flour or yeast at all but is made, on a rice-paper sheet, of, e.g., dried fig, dried apricots, almonds, anise, clove, cinnamon, orange peel, and honey. Some versions even contain green peppercorns!

As we passed the town of Pistoia, Anna pointed out that it was making handguns as early as the 15th century, and that the word "pistol" may be derived from its name.

In midmorning, we once again stopped at an Autogrill, this one heavy on the candy and on hot prepared food. They had a wide variety of David's beloved Ritter chocolate bars, in more flavors than we ever see in Tallahassee. It's a German product, but it was labeled in Italian (as the ones we get are labeled in English).

Anna was looking forward to this stop, because this Autogrill reliably carries an item she was anxious to replenish her supply of—Pocket Coffee. It comes in packs of 18 dark chocolate bonbons filled with liquid centers of concentrated coffee guaranteed to pack the caffeine punch you need when you can't get coffee. Interestingly, it also comes in decaf.

They also had cases and cases of olives in shrink-wrap bags, sacks of dried tomatoes, boxes of amaretti in many flavors (almond, raspberry), Jordan almonds in many flavors, baci, and roast-chicken-flavored potato chips.

Written 22 February 2024

Back on the road, we passed miles of plant nurseries.

Closer to town, we passed this amazing building, which is apparently at, and perhaps part of, Lucca's small airport.

We entered the city through St. Peter's gate, but had to leave the bus outside. Here are, with our hand luggage, walking up to the drive to the gate, beyond which we made the four-minute walk to our hotel, the Grand Universe. (The larger luggage somehow magically followed us to the hotel.) It was too early to check in, but we were able to leave anything at reception that we didn't want to carry to lunch and on our walking tour.

This hotel was our only "one night stand," and Anna had warned us that the rooms would be smaller than Tauck's usual standard but were the best available in town, but I didn't notice any particular difference. The rooms were certainly no smaller than many we've encountered in Europe.

We were on our own for lunch, so David and I chose Il Nicchio, where he had a Margharita pizza. Again, it was made with tomato sauce rather than fresh tomato slices, but the mozzarella looked better and it did at least have one basil leaf on it.

I had a salad of leaf lettuce and radicchio entirely covered with thin slices of smoked swordfish (!), diced tomato, chunks of fresh orange, and toasted pine nuts. Excellent!

No time for dessert; we hurried back to the hotel to join the one-hour “orientation walk” with a local guide (she was German but has lived in Italy for 44 years, 37 of them in Lucca).

Lucca was founded in 180 BC by the Romans. In an aerial view, you can still make out the rectilinear grid of streets on the center of town, but nothing very rectilinear is apparent at ground level.

About 750 AD, the Franks showed up, and it came under the rule of Charlemagne. The city wall was constructed from 1550–1650, under the Grand Duke of Tuscany. No one has ever attacked since the walls have been up, so the city was never governed by the Medici. When Napoleon showed up in 1799, Lucca didn't even try to resist, and Napoleon created the Principality of Lucca and Piombino and presented it to his sister, Elisa Bonaparte, who took up residence there in 1805.

She bulldozed the old public square (presumably a much bigger project back then, before invention of the actual bulldozer) to make what's still called the Piazza Napoleone (just around the corner from our hotel) and took over the palace there.

After Napoleon fell, Elisa was replaced by Maria Luisa, who (for complicated reasons; just Google Maria Luisa of Lucca) was given the Duchy of Lucca by the Congress of Vienna. She was disapponted, because she wanted Parma instead. Maria Luisa was a Bourbon, so the theater she founded is name the Giglio (Lily) after the Bourbon Fleur de Lis.

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is from Lucca. That's him at the left with, characteristically, a cigarette in his hand. But the city's conservatory of music is named for an earlier favorite son, Luigi Boccherini (1743ndash;1805), shown here at the right with, also characteristically, his cello at the ready.

Boccherini started out in Lucca but moved to Rome as a teenager, then Vienna, then, getting a job offer from the royal family, to Spain, where he spent the rest of his life.

Puccini's operas were premiered in the Giglio Theater, and he sat in box 13, where he could watch everyone in all the other boxes as well as the orchestra. He bought a little house on Lake Trasemino because he loved to hunt and fish, and he's buried there. (He is said to have he liked to hunt three things, operatic libretti, birds, and squirrels.) He wanted to be buried in the wall behind his piano, but that was illegal, so he had an engineer design and build a little chapel behind that wall, got it consecrated, and was buried there. He lived to a ripe old age, despite smoking between 80 and 100 cigarettes a day, but in the end, he died of throat cancer.

Lucca is on the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome (and then onward to ports of embarkation for the Holy Land).

Written 25 February 2024

In medieval times, well-to-do families built fortified towers to live in, right in town, because factions (notably the Guelphs and te Ghibbelines) were always at each others' throats. Neighbors who were allies sometimes even built bridges between neighboring towers. Florence has about 149 such towers; smaller Lucca only about 70. Even after the streets became safer, towers remained the fashion because they were a sign of wealth and status—the higher the showier. Eventually, the city put a limit on the permissible height. The photo at the left is that of family, who had the bright idea of building their tower right up to the height limit, then planting trees on top, so that they could still "tower over" the neighbors. On the city's website, the "L" of "Lucca" is shown as a tower with windows in the sides and little stylized trees on top.

To this day, there are no elevators in Lucca. Of the city's population of 50,000 of, only 9,000 live within the walls. People like to live just outside the city, where they are allowed to install such modern conveniences.

We were shown a number of churches (but by no means all of them). Here, at the right, is the city's original cathedral, Saints Giovanni and Reparata, dating from 754 AD. Excavations in its crypt from 1969 to 1992 discovered it stands on the site of a Roman building dating from 180 BC. Today, the guide said, people who dig in their cellars and find anything archaeological immediately bury it again and keep it quiet, lest their houses be taken over by a full-scale dig. The building was the site of a Puccini concert the ight we were there, but we didn't go.

In the 11th century, Bishop Anselm (later Pope Alexander II), unhappy with Saints G and R, built a new cathedral, Saint Martin of Tours, behind it and off to one side, and moved his seat there.

As is illustrated in the left-hand photo, preparations were underway for "Lucca-con," more formally, Lucca Comics and Games, an annual festival that takes over the city in late October. Huge marquees and tents were going up everywere obscuring a lot of views. Fortunately, we were able to walk around the tent to get the view at the right of the cathedral's façade. The tower to the right of it is its campanile.

According to our local guide, the architect had been to Cordoba, so Moorish influences apear in his work, for example in the rows of non-weight-bearing arches. The right-most lower arch is smaller than the other two because it had to accommodate preexisting buildings. She also said that the patterns on the façade come from the silk-weaving industry, which was big here at the time. It also shows St. Martin dividing his cloak.

The building was never finished, because they ran into financial problems, and when the money was raised and they came back to finish, they decided to spend in inside rather than on finishing outside, so the façade is rather low and doesn't even have a peak on top. But inside is a lovely Tintoretto last supper.

Two other churches were San Frediano and San Michele in Foro.

In my photo, it is unfortunately obscured by an ill-placed umbrella, but an iron cross is embedded in the wall to the right of the main doorway. I marks this church as one of seven that are special in some way (which I didn't catch), but it also served as a silk measure. If a piece of silk wasn't exactly that length and width, it wasn't woven here.

On the right is San Michele in Foro. I don't think the guide mentioned it, but the name leads me to think it was built in the old Roman forum. It dates at least from 795 AD, but we rebuilt in the 11th, and the façade from the 13th, again, incorporating lots of decorative arches. It rises, as intended, to a peak.

Here we are, passing through an archway leading to the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro (right), which is a perfect oval. It's on the site of the Roman amphitheater, which was built in the second century AD and sat 10,000. The arena is now surrounded by a wall of buildings (which the archway passes through) rather than by stadium seating. The archway we passed through is original; others around the oval are newer, higher, and narrower. The guide pointed out that between Roman times and 1815, the ground level rose—and here my notes are sketchy—either 15 feet or just 9 feet.

As you can see, the piazza is now ringed with café umbrellas. It's located within the walls of the medieval city but, as would have been normal for the time, outside the original rectangular Roman town.

Part of what makes Lucca unique and so picturesque is that it's medieval city wall is intact. We walked up a ramp built for the purpose to stroll along the top of it. As you can see, it's wide enough for a broad walking, running, and biking path as well as a line of trees shading park benches. There's a weekly fun run up there and sometimes bicycle races. I'm pretty sure the guide said they even hold car races up there sometimes. The full circuit is about three miles.

At the right is the view outward over the dry moat. Just to the right of the blue umbrella, you can see one of the exterior bastions. When the wall was manned for defensive purposes, 60 or 70 soldiers would always be in each of those bastions.

From the top of the wall, facing back toward the center of town, we could look out over the Moriconi family palazzo, its lovely gardens, and many statues from the the 1600's. It has an orangerie, which around here is called a limonaria. The left-hand photo is how it actually looked; the right-hand one is telephotoed.

After only about 20 years, they had to sell it to another family, who kept it going until the 19th century, partly by renting parts of it out. In te 1840's they rented part of it to the first German brewer in town, Felix Pfanner, who set up his brewery and a beer garden there. He prospered and eventually was able to buy the whole palazzo. The brewery closed in 1929, but the Pfanner family still owns the palazzo and is carrying out an ambitious restoration program. Part of it is now open for visits, and I think you can even stay overnight.

Back at the hotel, we had some time off before our included à la carte dinner at La Locanda dell'Angelo, a 5-minute walk from the hotel.

The amuse-bouche was a tuna croquette, served on a little pool of bechamel sauce.

David started with this cheese stuffed portobello mushroom.

My starter was the terrine of chicken livers with blueberry sauce. Not at all like what you'd get in France corresponding to that description, but not bad.

David's main course was eggplant ravioli with red and yellow plum tomato sauce.

And I had spaghettini with octopus ragout. The octopus was ground fine and could have passed for veal.

Them came David's semifreddo of pistachio with chocolate sauce, . . .

. . . and my orange-perfumed crème brulé.