Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi

This guide to the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi in Lucca centers on Ottavio Mansi, a silk merchant who fused a cluster of medieval tower houses into one grand palazzo so his son Carlo could marry into the noble Pepoli family. You'll hear about the Camera degli Sposi, the gilded bridal chamber craftsmen finished in 1688 for that wedding, its carved caryatids and silk-stitched birds and blooms. The guide follows what that room was meant to prove about a merchant family's worth, and whether Ottavio ever learned if the marriage delivered it.