Thomas Ashby

“ The city has a well-built and substantial appearance, its chief attraction lying in the numerous churches, which belong in the main to a well-marked basilican type, and present almost too richly decorated exteriors, fine apsidal ends and quadrangular campaniles, in some cases with battlemented summits, and windows increasing in number as they ascend. In style they are an imitation of the Pisan. It is remarkable that in the arcades a pillar generally occupies the middle of the façade. ”

“ The river Serchio affords water-power for numerous factories. The most important industries are the manufacture of jute goods (carried on at Ponte a Moriano in the Serchio valley, 6 m. N. of Lucca) , tobacco, silks and cottons. The silk manufacture, introduced at Lucca about the close of the 11th century, and in the early part of the 16th the means of subsistence for 30,000 of its inhabitants, now gives employment (in reeling and throwing) to only about 1500. The bulk of the population is engaged in agriculture. ”

“ In the nave is a little octagonal temple or chapel, which serves as a shrine for the most precious of the relics of Lucca, a cedar-wood crucifix, carved, according to the legend, by Nicodemus, and miraculously conveyed to Lucca in 782. ”