Lucca began as an Etruscan settlement which is believed to have been founded where there had been a Ligurian village. The Roman conquest left its traces in the typical grid of town in the historic centre. The Romans took Lucca in the 180 BC. Their forum lay where Piazza San Michele is today. The Piazza del Anfiteatro still keeps remains of the Roman amphitheatre after which it was named. During the Roman rule Lucca was venue of the 56BC conference that formally established the supremacy of the first Roman triumvirate.
Odoacer the first Germanic ruler in the peninsula sacked Lucca in the first century of the Middle Ages. In the 6th century Lucca was already an attractive town with its own fortress which was surrounded by Narses. In the Lombards time Lucca become the seat of the dukedom with its own coins.
The venerated Volto Santo (holy face) preserved in Lucca, attributed to Nicodemus’s hands got to town in the 8th century. The healthy silk trade of Lucca began in the 1000s made town grow and was even a powerful competitor against Byzantium's fabrics. In the 10th century Lucca became capital of the Margravate of Tuscany a partly independent territory compulsorily faithful to the Holy Roman Empire.
Countess Matilda of Tuscany’s death open doors for Lucca to become an independent city-state with its own constitution in 1160. Its independence lasted about 5 centuries. Tuscany as well as Europe was organized as a feudal system controlled by powerful families with their own bureaucratic and judicial system many of which are named by Dante, an exiled in Lucca, in his Divine Comedy. One of them, the Malaspina family, controlled many unimportant provinces in the area stretching between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany.
Guelph Luccheto Gattilusio, Capitano del Popolo, controlled Lucca in 1273 and 1277. In 1314, Pisan Uguccione della Faggiuola became ruler of Lucca thanks to internal conflict but remained in power only for two years as the Lucchese ousted him to grant Castruccio Castracani the power. He turned Lucca into a thriving town in central Italy. His army won the battle of Altopascio in 1325 against the Florentines and he was later chosen by Louis IV the Bavarian to be duke of Lucca. This famed stateman whose life is portrayed on one of Machiavelli’s political books managed to turned Lucca into a powerful adversary of the Florentines until his death in 1328.
Lucca was venue of the meeting to finish the division within the Church at the begining of the 15th century. Louis of Bavaria’s army took Lucca which was later on bought by wealthy Genoese, Gherardino Spinola, then taken by John of Bohemia, held as a pledge against payment of a loaan by the Rossi of Parma, forcefully given to Veronese Martino della Scala, bought by the Florentines, given to the Pisans, and then freed (in name only) by emperor Charles IV and ruled by a deputy. Lucca’s autonomy survived thanks to a democracy and an oligarchy from the 17th century on until the French Revolution took place as well as Venice and Genoa which also remained independent.
Lucca as well as Venice remained a city state with a republican constitution for centuries until it was seized by Napoleon in 1805. He enthroned his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as Queen of Etruria. 10 years later Lucca was made a Bourbon-Parma duchy, until 1847 when it was engulfed by Tuscany and later on by the Kingdom of Italy.
