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Barga,Tuscany:
The Ancient town of Barga (Tuscany), captures the essence of Tuscany
- pastel, red-roofed houses, historic palaces, cafes and restaurants
serving exquisite local cuisine.
It’s dominated by the fine cathedral, which houses have an excellent
marble pulpit and some works of the Della Robbia school.An important
centre of the Garfagnana and a pearl of Tuscany, it has wonderful views
of the whole area and the town itself is a charming network of narrow
streets, archways and winding stairways.
Barga stands right above an
alluvial plain known as Pian Grande and crossed by two torrents. The
town originally had three gates, but today only two remain, the Porta
Reale and the Porta Macchiaia; they both have guardhouses and open
towards Piazza del Fosso, so called because of the moat that used to
surround the walls.
The historic town centre lies at the foot of a fortified hillock known as
Arringo, Barga’s small Acropolis: here a large open space surrounded by
high walls contains the Romanesque duomo of St. Christopher and the
Palazzo Pretorio. The walls which are made of roughly hewn local stone
are vertical and crowned in some portions by patrol balconies projecting
inwards. Barga played a role as political centre of the Medici within
the Serchio valley and controlled one of the main river crossings along
the valley floor, in historical times an important route of
communication in a politically complex environment divided between Lucca
and the Dukes of Este.
Walls of Barga:
Barga possessed walls since the Middle Ages; the
castle of Barga was repeatedly besieged during the struggle between
Lucca and the Holy See in the aftermath of Countess Matilde’s death,
cause of much bloodshed in the Serchio valley.
It became an important commercial
and agricultural centre thanks to its flatlands and soon aroused the
envy of Lucca: so the latter imposed on Barga high duties giving rise to
a lively smuggling activity towards the Florentine territory. The damage
caused by this illegal activity to Lucca’s economy prompted the siege of
1298 that destroyed the walls. It was only after 1316 that Castruccio
Castracani had the fortifications rebuilt and the town slowly regained
its commercial and political role; however, at Castruccio’s death, the
citizens of  Barga
took advantage of Lucca’s moment of weakness and daringly declared
themselves subject to Florence: so began, in 1331, the long and
prosperous Florentine period during which the walls were restored and
reinforced until they reached their final consistency, maintained until
the XIXth century demolitions, with high and narrow curtains, to which
later several truncated cone shaped
towers
were added.
In 1550 Giovan Battista Belluzzi, famous architect
of the Medici, came to Barga where he remained a long time to oversee
repairs to the walls that threatened to collapse in several places.
The long period of peace that
marked the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries in the Serchio valley gradually
diminished the strategic importance of the town’s fortifications. One of
the gates, the Porta di Borgo, was pulled down in 1833 and the same fate
was later reserved to part of the walls that had to make way for a new
road. During World War II some of the remaining portions of the walls
were destroyed by bombs
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