Palazzo Ducale di Lucca

This guide to the Palazzo Ducale di Lucca centers on an audience granted in 1522, when the head of the Republic's government met with members of the Poggi family over a dispute as small as who would appoint a parish priest. It traces the wounded pride behind the meeting, backed by a papal official named Bartolomeo Arnolfini, and the knives the Poggi men carried into the hall where you now stand. Look up at the calm stone loggia Bartolomeo Ammannati later built across this facade, added long after that day.