Benni! Benni!

Wait! Stop! Did you hear it?

Standing amidst the ruins, the broken down walls, fallen down centuries ago, built some ages before that, with dirt, grass and dandelions making their way between the old cobblestones -- there it is again. Do you hear it? The voices, the sounds of creaking cartwheels of the wagons that passed by centuries ago?

Of course you do. Your mind fills with the imagination of all those many people who have come before you, some, mind you, standing out more than others. And you have the sense that none of what you see or experience today would be there if it weren’t for all those cumulative years of joys and despairs, tears and laughter, toils and pleasures that have come before. Some link to you – of course they do, why else would you be standing there? Others are harder to conjure up out of the collective memories. Your hand is tempted to reach out, to grasp a faint whisp, like a feather, of something still remaining from the footsteps long past.

No doubt, if you are in a touristy place, there might be a recording or video re-enacting a scene of the past. Or, if you are lucky, there are people dressed up as jousters, courtiers or knights re-playing an event. It’s quite the fashion now.  

On one trip to Italy, we had a dramatic replay in a totally unexpected form. In Lucca, near Pisa…

We arrived at the station in Lucca after a pleasant train ride from Pisa. Another nice warm and sunny autumn day, the long dry blessings for tourists translating into dry, parched landscapes – and dust! I wished at several points along the way that I could lean out and give the train window a cleaning so we could enjoy the beautiful landscape more. Otherwise, we couldn’t complain about the services: the trains ran efficiently, on time, and were cheap.

Onto the platform at Lucca, where do we go from here? Since being moved from train stations, finding tourist information in some cities was kind of like a treasure hunt. The lady at the station Tabak in Lucca gestured vaguely towards city centre, saying it was a 10 minutes’ walk. Maybe it would have helped if we had better understood Italian.

Would we like her maps or guides? she asked, half in gestures, other half in Italian, half in English. We declined a map (expensive, we got a free one in Pisa) but got a guide book.

And so we set off on a cultural trail, with many gems in the old town centre, surrounded by well preserved bulwarks and city walls. No longer needed to fortify the town against neighbouring Pisa or other marauders, the bulwarks had been converted into a most delightful walking and cycling path, lined with trees in most places, bringing welcome shade in hot summer sun.

Inside the walls, every other block seemed to have an old church, many more than you had time for in a short day. Why so many, you wondered? Perhaps it was the influential families, having their own chapels to attend services in, like the castles dotted around hillsides, each with their own place of worship. In the town, the family castle walls may be gone but not the barriers of custom and pride preventing them from mixing too closely with their rivals.

We decided to limit our churchly visits to the cathedral or Duomo. As with many famous cathedrals, what is visible today, albeit already nearly 800 years old, with its architecture, its famous paintings as well as sculptures, is only the latest incarnation of several sacred structures on the same site dating back to the 5th century or earlier.

Our further meanderings took us down many picturesque streets and alleys, the fronts of buildings astonishingly well preserved in the character of early centuries, belying modern shops and interiors behind. Piazzas, palaces, towers, gardens, and of course cafes and ice cream parlours – a wonderful blend for all appetites!

Towers – now there was a fascinating subject! Yes, towers. Let me explain. Here the guide book was most informative, giving intriguing insights into their history --