Porta San Pietro

This guide to Porta San Pietro in Lucca reads the gate as a message: stone lions still gripping the chains of a drawbridge raised for a siege that never came, and a carved word overhead, Libertas, from the tiny republic wedged between Florence and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It follows the walls the Republic finished around 1566, built low, thick and earthen to withstand cannon fire rather than shrug off swords, at a time when both larger neighbors had already swallowed nearly every other city in the region. Look up at the arch and you can still trace both symbols, Saint Peter and the Republic's own crest, standing guard side by side.