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Tuscany – Lucca Comics and Games

We are all familiar with the image Lucca normally presents to the world a well-mannered, conservative, medieval city of music and art.
Wall to wall Puccini, lots of old world charm, peaceful, even sleepy, or as forbes magazine (see facing page) would put it, “idyllic”. So can this be the same city that goes a bit mental every October with its annual festival of Comics and Games?
Just when you think the weekend wardrobe of young lucchesi consists entirely of velvet doublets and tights, suddenly the streets are full of ninjas, Goths, cybermen and gorillas.
It’s a very puzzling. So Grapevine talked to Gary Frank, a successful british artist working in the world of comics, who knows Lucca well.
“Comics and Games has now been going for over 40 years, but when i first started coming to Lucca in the early 1990’s, it was still a small affair based at the Palasport outside the city walls”, Gary recalls. “Now is huge the attendante last year was over 150,00 wich makes it closet o being the largest event of its kind in Europe, only just behind the annual festival at Angouleme in Bordeaux.”
Gary i san illustrator, or what’s known in the business as a “penciller”, lite rally drawing in pencil the illustrations for comic magazines, most notably “Superman”, which will later be inked and digitally coloured. He works from a script, in close touch with his writer to tell a story in pictures.
Comics are of course now part o fan industry which spans television, film and video games . They can be a great way of raising brand awareness, introducing characters and therefore making readers more likely to watch the movie and buy T-shirt. And video games would warrant a separate article by themselves.
This is in fact very big business indeed.
The two giants of the industry, both U-based, are DC, owned by Warner Brothers, and only a couple of months ago, Disney Studios bought Marvel Entertainment for a cool 4 billion dollars.
So quite a smart business for Lucca to be in? Certainly, says Gary, “although Comics and Games in Lucca has always been lesso f an industry networking event and more for the fans. It’s the cultural aspect which Italy generally is keen to promote.
And of course for an artist, comics can provide enormous artistic freedom. It costs just the same whether I am drawing a building blowing up or Clarke Kent having a cupo f coffee.
I don’t have an art director telling me there’s no budget for a particolar scene, as can hppen in films. Comics do genuinely provide a showcase for creatività and outlet for story-telling talent”.
For many year, now, particularly in Italy comics have been seen as not just for children, but as “graphic novels”. Gary Frank is in no doubt, and quotes Stan Lee the founding father of Marvel Comics, “Suppose Shakespeare and Michelangelo, were alive today, and Michelangelo said “Hey Bill, let’s do a comic”, the point being the comic book is just as viable a form of literature as anything else”.
So what should we look out for this year? Many of the events will be held in the Palazzo Ducale and for the firts time, the Real Collegio, bringing the Festival right into the heart of the city. Expect to see a strong Japanese influence. L’Area Japan is new this year featuring everything Japanese from manga (comic and print cartoon) to traditional ceramics and cuisine. Let’s hope the sushi doesn’t fall foul of lucca’s ethnic food laws.
There are competions galore for artists, writers and bands ( the winners will get a Mediaset soundtrack contract).
Over the weekend 29 october to 1 november the Cosplay parades organised by the Associazione Culturale Flash Gordon will feature competitors dressed in the costumes of their favourite comic-strip characters. There is not a seamstress in Lucca who is not currently working flat out. On saturdays throughout october a computer games challenge will pit teams representing the Torre Asinello against the Torre Guinigi.
Not to mention the Modding contest apparently it’s all about modifying games software to create new content. So now you know. A bit crazy? A tad alternative for elegant, respectable Lucca? But maybe not so out of place ina “città d’arte”. And the city is after all home to the Italian National Museum of Comics ( the Museo Nazionale del Fumetto e dell’Immagine in Piazza San Romano).
Enjoy the fun. Just watch out fot those gorillas.

Full festival programme on www.luccacomicsandgames.com
More details on the musem at www.museoitalianodelfumetto.it

Tuscany – Greve in Chianti

The old name of Greve in Chianti was Greve, in 1972 the town was renamed after the inclusion in a Chianti area.
It is located about 30 km in south of Florence.
Sitting in the Val di Greve, it is named for the small, fast-flowing river that runs through it, is the principal town in the Chianti wine district which stretches south of Florence to just north of Siena. Until recently it has been a quiet, almost bucolic town because it was, and still is, well off the main roads.

Main sights:
– Franciscan monastery
– The triangular main square, where a market has been running more or less continuously for
– Chiesa Santa Croce which was rebuilt in 1325 after being burned to the ground, along with the rest of the town, by the Duke of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani.
– Montefioralle (surrounding) where there is achurch of Santo Stefano, with a late 13th century Madonna with Child and a 15th century Trinity and Saints.
– Castello da Verrazzano (distance 2 km)
– Panzano, is a little town where there is Pieve of San Leolino, known from the 10th century.

Tuscany – Not just the Leaning Tower (Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa)

Millions and millions of people have walked through the Piazza dei Miracoli in pisa, looking upward to admire the leaning tower and personally acknowledging that yes, it really bends quite a lot.
But for sure not so many have asked themselves how, when and why such a masterpiece was accomplished and what efforts li ebehind maintaining it trhoughout the centuries and for the years to come.
It was the Italian poet gabriele D’Annunzio who coined the phrase “Piazza dei Miracoli” (the square of miracles) to sum up the amazement that centuries of visitors have experienced.
The complex includes the Cathedral, the Battistero, the Leaning Tower, the Monumental Cemetery, and two museums also in the square.
It was built in the XII century by the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, the official institution of the archibishop of Pisa.
The archbishop in 1092 was awaeded the title of Primate, and so the cathedral was labelled as “primaziale” hence Opera della Primaziale Pisana, work of the Pisan Primacy.
This institution is now in charge of the maintenance of the monumental complex and the money raised from entrance fees is used to keep it intact for the centurie sto come.
Throughout the year the Opera della primaziale Pisana organizes many events. The next to come is the famous International Festival of Sacred Music called Anima Mundi. The artistic direcctor is once again Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
Two oratorio will take place in the cathedral on the opening and closing dates: one by handel (tuesday 15 sept) “isrrael in Egypt with Maestro Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir and the other by Haydn (friday 9 oct) “The Creation”.
On this latter date Sir John will conduct the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique along with the Monteverdi Choir. These two composer have been chosen to celebrate respectively the 250th and 200th anniversaries of their deaths.
other concerts will take place in the Monumental Cemetery. Let me just also highlight the return to Anima Mundi of the violinist Viktoria Mullova and the Vienna Chorus of Voci Bianche with 500 years of history behind them.
All seven concerts are free and start at 9.00 pm

Tuscany – Montaione

Montaione is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Florence in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 35 km southwest of Florence.
The town has ancient origins, the town is rich in culture, traditions and history.
In a surrounding area is possible to admire a charming landscape of Tuscany countryside of Chianti hills. Montaione is characterized by gentle hills cultivated with olive groves and chianti vineyards, is an ideal place where to make a travel and to spend a relaxing holiday with nature.

Toscana – Men (and women) in black

This article is not about what you might think: its subjects is not the CIA or FBI
instead it is about a bizarre set of laws passed in Lucca athe end of the seventeenth century. They esiste right up until the demise of Lucca’s independence at the end of the eighteenth century, when the governing oligarchy had more important things to worry about: like Napoleon Bonaparte. That doesn’t mean there was a very particolar type of spying.
As the silk trade began to dwindle and competition from other sites in Europe started to toreate Lucca’s cloth market, the government look severe action to protect it. In 1695, due to what was perceived as “frivolous preoccupation with fashion” the government rivive the office controlling luxury known as the Offizio sugli ornamenti e prammatica.
Legislation known as sumptuary laws had been in place in Lucca since 1308 to control luxury in dress and to police occasions such as wedding feasts and funeral wakes, but they were never strictly enforced.
In the sixteenth century, during the Spanish occupation of the Italian peninsula, the italian nobility adepte the fashion for wearing black from the Spanish but a tundre years later in Lucca this custom was actually imposed as low.
While coloured silk continued to be producted for export, on the recommendation of this office the government passed laws ordering its own upper class citizens those with the money to appear in the city only in black.
The oligarchy believed that by curling its citizens’ spending its wealth would be conserved. This protectionist and ultimately futile measure was not only inspired by economics but was also political, in that it also singled out the ruling classa s a particolar unit at a time when the Lucca oligarchy was ahrinking in numbers and becoming increasingly elite.
Legislation firstly targeted males from the age of eighteen and then females from the age of fifteen.
Some Lucchese citizens didn’t much care for this invasive law and resourcefully found ways around it: especially the ladies. Some sneaked a little colour into slashed sleeves or discreet petticoats, or added a few gold buttons or some jeweled stitching – anything to bring a bit of individualità to their dress. Consequently, the sumptuary spies were out in force and their duty was to lurk about in public places seeking out miscreants to report to the offices.
Confusing matters were the courtesans: thug forbidden to wear black or dark colours in order to distinguish them from respectable women, they wished to be seen as ladies, so they were often prosecuted for wearing black!
It wasn’t just the citizens who were spied on. In the interest of protecting the dying silk industry from foreign competion, any tailor dressmaker or haberdasher who imported or worked with foreign cloth was liable not only to a hefty fine but also physical punishment in the formo f two rounds of the corda or rope hoist a nastly contraption by wich the prisoner had is hands tied behind and was then hoisted up several feet in the air causing excruciating pain.
female offenders faced a spell in prison. Despite these measures, the constant reiteration of the laws between 1695 and 1798 and numerous contraventions documented illustrate how difficult it was to enforce the legislation.
To visitors, the city looked as if it were in perpetual mourning.
One tourist commented that the lucchesi looked like a flock of crows. Another quipped that going to the theatre in Lucca was like attending a funeral, adding that it was only the priests who wore gaily-coloured robes: the exact opposite of what was to be seen elsewhere.
One lady approved the legislation, remarking that it had tended to stop foolish fashion wars. Despite this, it was reported that Lucchese women even elderly oneswere still wearing the ltest fashions from Paris, while their husbands dressed in the outmoded style of twenty years before!