Mura di Lucca

This guide to the Mura di Lucca traces the Renaissance ramparts the Republic of Lucca raised between 1544 and 1648, when nearly two thousand workers a day braced against an attack from Florence that everyone expected but that never came. You'll hear how the walls' only real opponent turned out to be a flood in 1812, and how even Napoleon took the city by treaty rather than by force. It follows his sister Elisa Baciocchi, who later cut a new gate through the eastern wall once defense no longer seemed necessary, and asks what becomes of a fortress built to kill that never has to.