Wednesday 3rd January 2018
The weather this morning and for most of today was very bad with heavy rain alternating with light rain. We walked into the centre of Lucca. This is the facade of the church of San Michele in Foro.
This is a general view inside the church.
On the walls are numerous large paintings.
Here's another.
And another.
There are also some smaller paintings.
There is also this mural.
We moved on through the maze of old streets. This is the Tower of Guinigi with Holm Oaks growing out of the top..
This is the remains of the Roman amphitheatre with medieval buildings incorporated into where the grandstands once were.
We visited the Cathedral.
The facade is asymmetrical.
It costs 3 euros to go inside - we paid.
Inside is this truly bizarre relic called Volto Santo. It is said to have been carved by Nicodemus a witness to the crucifixion and to be a likeness of Chris on the Cross! Supposedly it came to Lucca by its own volition firstly by boat from the Holy Land and then by oxen up from the sea all propelled by divine will.
There are some interesting paintings in the Cathedral.
This one is reminiscent of an eastern orthodox icon.
The Cathedral bell tower is very high.
This inscribed stone is incorporated into the Cathedral facade low down on one side.
We were fairly wet by now so we walked back to our van and set off along the coast heading towards Genoa.
It was a long journey. We crossed from Tuscany into Liguria. Finally we saw some flashes of sunshine. We stopped for the night at a car park at San Rocco just to the east of Genoa.
Today we travelled 112 miles (180 kilometres). We are at N44.33250 E9.16570
2 comments:
What marvellous churches in Lucca. Those facades are quite extraordinary as is the great Campanile of the Cathedral. I would really enjoy seeing such sights and the also some of the paintings. The one depicting 4 saints in St Michele in Foro - I think I can help with the identifications of 3 of the 4. The saint on the far left pointing to the sore on his left thigh is St. Roc, patron saint of the plague, to be invoked at time of pestilence, the elderly gent , 3rd from left is St Jerome, an early Doctor of the church and the man responsible for translating the bible from Hebrew into Latin and producing the first Vulgate version. The woman on the far right holding a wooden cross is St Helena, who was the mother of the Emperor Constantine who adopted Christianity as the state religion for the Roman Empire after allegedly seeing the sign of the cross in the sky just before a battle he won. His mother made a special journey to Jerusalem to recover the cross on which Christ was crucified and she brought it back to Rome. First lesson of the New Year!
Love,
Anne-Marie
Hi Anne-Marie,
I'm sure that you would really enjoy a visit to Lucca - what's stopping you going? There are many more old churches as well as the two we visited.
Once again many thanks for your expert interpretation of the things we are seeing.
With love, Roger.
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