Piazza San Michele

This guide to Piazza San Michele in Lucca follows a legend generations of visitors have chased: a flash of green light said to catch on the raised hand of the marble archangel Michael, four meters tall atop the soaring facade of the church of San Michele in Foro. You'll hear why that facade towers so improbably high over the modest nave behind it, and the iron skeleton hidden inside the stone to keep it from swaying in the wind. The square below has been a meeting point since Roman roads first crossed here.