What to See in Lucca - Top Sights and Attractions

Sculpture created in 1484. The Holy Face of Lucca is an eight-foot-tall, ancient wooden carving of Christ crucified in Lucca, Italy. Medieval legends state that it was sculpted by Nicodemus who assisted St. Joseph of Arimathea in placing Christ in his tomb after the crucifixion. The same legends placed its miraculous arrival in Lucca to AD 782.

Radiocarbon dating of both wood and canvas places it between 770–880 AD, which corresponds to the Legend of Leobino according to which the Holy Face arrived from Palestine to Lucca in 782 (another copy says 742).

The Holy Face is located in the free-standing octagonal Carrara marble chapel (the tempietto or "little temple"), which was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitali, the sculptor-architect of Lucca, to contain it. The tempietto stands in the left-hand aisle of the cathedral of San Martino in Lucca.

Copies of a similar size from the 12th century are found widely spread across Europe. These include the Cross of Imervard in the Brunswick Cathedral at Braunschweig, Germany, the Holy Face of Sansepolcro at Sansepolcro, Italy and possibly the Batlló Crucifix of Barcelona, Spain. The Holy Face is also depicted on a 14th-century gothic fresco in a Lutheran church in Štítnik, Slovakia.

"By the Holy Face of Lucca" was a phrase often used by William Rufus when swearing to perform an act or deed during his reign as King of England.^[5]

Botanical garden in Lucca, Italy. The Orto Botanico Comunale di Lucca is a botanical garden located at Via del Giardino Botanico, 14, Lucca, Italy, and operated by the city. It is open daily during the warmer months, and weekday mornings off-season. An admission fee is charged.

The garden was established in 1820 by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, and contains a number of mature plantings of botanical interest. Its site is roughly triangular, set within a corner of Lucca's city wall, and organized into two main sections. One contains the gardens proper with an arboretum, pond, and smaller plantings; the other contains the greenhouse, botanical school, and laboratories. The Museo Botanico "Cesare Bicchi" contains a herbarium and archive.^[10]

Museum in Lucca, Italy. The Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi is the main art museum hosting the pre-modern art collections owned by the city of Lucca, Italy.

The museum is located in a refurbished villa on Via della Quarquonia, completed in 1418 for Paolo Guinigi, ruler of Lucca until 1430. After his death, the building was confiscated by the republic, and it has served various purposes over the years. Only in 1924 was it selected to house the art collection, which until then was housed in the Palazzo Pubblico. In 1948 it was donated to the Italian state, which carried out a more organized preservation campaign and at the same time rearranged the collection, subsequently distributing it between this villa and the Palazzo Mansi.

The late-Gothic building was constructed from 1413 to 1418 as a Villa di Delizia. It has an imposing brick façade with central ground-floor portico. Once elaborately decorated by Guinigi, it now houses collections of mainly the ancient, medieval, renaissance, baroque, and neoclassic periods.^[11]

Museum in Lucca, Italy. The Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi is one of the two main art museum hosting tapestry collections and mainly post-19th century art collections owned by the city of Lucca, Italy. The collection is displayed in the Baroque palace, formerly belonging to the Mansi family, and located in central Lucca. Many of the original room decorations remain in place.

The Palace was first erected at the site of a few earlier tower-houses bought in 1616 by the Lucchese merchant of silk Ascanio Mansi and his descendants. While the facade retains earlier Renaissance window features, between 1686 and 1691, Ascanio's son Raffaello employed the architect Raffaello Mazzanti to further renovate the now palace, and the piano nobile rooms acquired the present decoration and a grand staircase access. The cooler ground floor rooms were turned into a summer apartment.

In the second half of the 18th century, Luigi Mansi pursued further refurbishing. The Mansi family retained prestige in the early 19th century; Raffaele Mansi and Camilla Parensi had been appointed courtiers to Elisa Bonaparte and Felice Baciocchi. Raffaello Mansi Orsetti, who died in 1956, was the first to display the art collections to the public. In the mid-1960s his children sold the palace to the state, which has converted into a National Museum of arts and tapestries.

The interiors house a highly decorated bedroom alcove with gilded caryatid columns flanking the portal.^[17]

Research institution in Lucca, Italy. IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca is a public research institution and a graduate school located in Lucca, Italy. It was founded in 2005 under the name of IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, where the acronym IMT stands for "Institutions, Markets, Technologies”. The School is part of the Italian superior graduate school system and its main Campus is located in the San Francesco Complex within the historic city walls of Lucca.

As an institution for advanced studies, IMT School hosts researchers who carry out methodological research, held to high scientific standards, leading to the development of new knowledge.

Its international advisory board includes a number of prominent scientists, including Giulio Tononi, Alfio Quarteroni and Adina L. Roskies.^[18]