Lucca, chief town of an Italian province, is situated in a plain, bounded by picturesque hills and irrigated by the Serchio, 14 miles by rail NE. of Pisa. Pop. (1894) 77,300. 'Lucca the Industrious' has a great trade in olive-oil and silk, the latter manufacture introduced in the end of the 11th century. The cathedral of St Martin, begun in 1063, has a cedar crucifix reputed to have been brought to Lucca in 782; this Volto Santo ('Sacred Countenance') is mentioned by Dante. The church also contains several fine paintings, the tomb of Maria Guinigi (cf. Ruskin's Modern Painters, vol. ii.), and valuable archives. There are nearly forty other churches, some dating from the 7th and 8th centuries. A splendid aqueduct (1820) supplies the town with water from the Pisan hills. The municipal buildings (1578) contain a valuable collection of paintings. Lucca is exceptionally rich in artistic and scientific institutions. The city was a bishopric as early as 347, and in 1726 was made an archbishopric. The environs abound in delightful villas. In a charming valley, 16 miles N. of the town, are situated the mineral baths of Lucca, which have been famous since the 15th century. Their temperature varies from 96° to 136° F.—The province, which has an area of 558 sq. m. and a pop. (1895) of 289,890, is famed for the fertility of its soil and the superiority of its agriculture. The Lucchesi are a frugal, shrewd race; numbers leave home in search of employment, and they form a large proportion of the itinerant figure-vendors, organ-grinders, and stucco-workers of Europe.
Lucca (anc. Luca) was made a Roman colony in 177 B.C. It was erected into a duchy by the Lombards, and its merchants traded in English wool from the 9th, but more especially from the 12th century. The town had a most chequered history down to 1369, when it became an independent republic, which lasted till 1797. In 1805 it was erected into a principality by Napoleon for his sister Elisa Bacciocchi, and in 1815 passed to Maria Louisa of Spain, queen of Etruria. Her son, Charles Louis, ceded it to Tuscany in 1847, on obtaining possession of Parma and Piacenza.