Porta Santa Maria

This guide to Porta Santa Maria in Lucca starts with an architect's rejected design: Ginese Bresciani first carved lions for the gate, until Lucca's Senate insisted on the city's own symbol, the panther. From there it follows why this gate and the four-kilometer ring of walls around it were built at such expense during the sixteenth century, even though Florence and Pisa never sent an army against them. You'll also hear how trams once rolled straight through the archway on a line that ran between eighteen eighty-three and nineteen thirty-two. Look up at the panthers still flanking the arch as you listen.