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Writing the entire story of Lucca and it’s rural areas, in a
website is impossible, taking into consideration the immenseness
of the subject, trying to tell it’s story synthetically in a few
lines would mean repeating those four well known episodes,
therefore, wanting to supply useful information to the lovers of
history or just to the many people wishing to visit Lucca and
it’s province, we will try to narrate in this site some
fragments of this history.
These fragments of history, will include; some curiosities and
the most famous events and people.
If
while consulting this site you should find any incorrect
information we will be pleased to hear from you at
info@contadolucchese.it and
obviously correct our errors.
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The river Serchio is made up of various
springs coming from the Apennines and Apuane alpes, meeting up a
Piazza al Serchio and giving life to the to Toscana’s 3rd
biggest river after the Arno and the Ombrone. Now after passing
through Garfagnana and the plain of Lucca, it flows into the
Tirreno sea in the area of the San Rossore Park (PI) a little
north of Pisa.
In ancient times the Serchio flowed another
way, joining the Arno river, this was told for the first time,
by the Greek geographer Strabone (64ac to 121ac) in his
geographical account in which he narrates the birth of Pisa,
which came about between two joining rivers, the Arno flowing
down from Arezzo and the Ausar flowing down from the Apennines.
Later on, also Plinio il Vecchio ( 23 to 79dc) spoke about it in
his work “Naturalis Historia” saying; “The first city in Etruria
is Luni, famous for its port, after which follows Lucca, far
from the sea but nearer to Pisa, situated between the rivers
Auser and Arno”, and in the VI century, Cassiodoro narrates in
two of his letters how king Teodorico gave orders which
maintained these two rivers navigable.
The river, once it reaches the plain of Lucca
divides into several branches, the main branch running through
the depression of Bientina and then ran into the Arno, the
others ran together to form a marshy area in the plain. The
Romans were the first to begin its drainage, which will change
the course of the river in Vth century in an eastern direction
and will be called Auserculus (later to be called Auserculo,
Auserclo, Sercul, Serclo, Serchium, e Serchio). Gregorio Magno,
pope from 590 to 604 narrates in “Diologues” that he had heard
of a miracle accomplished by Bishop Frediano which had taken
place in Lucca, that apparently had changed the course of the
river Ausarit (named by Strabone “Ausar”) thus saving the city
from flooding.
The origin of the antique name of the Serchio
hasn’t been well defined by the Latin historian Svetonio, he
declared that the Auser derived from Etruscan and its meaning
was god or divinity, while modern day glottologists affirm that
the name comes from Ausa (pre-ligurian) which means spring.
With the passing of the centuries, the
eastern branch disappeared (today its name has been conserved in
the Ozzeri, a channel that runs to the south of the city) and
the western branch has become the Serchio that we know today.
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