Walls of Lucca
— the wall the war never came to.
Not only on a wall.
“A wall built for a war that never arrived. The ramparts went up over a century and a half, finished in 1648, thick enough at the base to stop cannon, and then no army came. In the 1820s the Duchess Maria Luisa turned the top into a public walk and planted it. Now it is a green ring above the rooftops, an unbroken loop over the old town, nearly seven hundred plane trees deep, and on most evenings the whole town seems to be up there walking it. The defence that was never needed became the place everyone goes.
Walls of Lucca, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Lucca sits on the Tuscan plain just inland from Pisa, an old silk-trade town that kept its complete ring of walls when most Italian cities lost theirs. The circuit runs 4,223 metres around the historic centre, an unbroken loop with eleven bastions and six gates. The walls enclose the medieval and Roman street grid below, and the River Serchio runs past the northern edge. Lucca is reached by train from Florence and Pisa, and the walls are free to enter at any of the gates, open at all hours. They are counted among the best-preserved Renaissance fortifications in Europe.
Construction began on 7 May 1504 and ran for nearly a century and a half, finishing in 1648. The result is a textbook of Renaissance military engineering: curtain walls up to thirty metres thick at the base and twelve metres tall, set with eleven arrow-headed bastions angled so each could cover the next with fire. Military engineers including Baldassarre Lanci shaped the design. No army ever tested it. The single time the walls held back anything was the night of 18 November 1812, when the River Serchio flooded and the city bolted its gates and packed them with mattresses to keep the water out.
After the walls lost any military point, Duchess Maria Luisa di Borbone had the rampart top turned into a public promenade in the 1820s and planted it with trees. Today a broad avenue runs the whole circuit, shaded by close to seven hundred plane trees with holm oak, lime, horse chestnut and a few ginkgo among them. It is free and open around the clock. Lucchesi walk it in the evening, runners use it as a loop, and bicycles can be rented at the main gates; the full ring is a little over four kilometres, an unhurried hour on foot.