The city of Lucca belonged to the Republic of Pisa at
the time that most of the churches were built or rebuilt,
and as the place has always been poor, when compared with
Florence and Pisa, the buildings are, happily, in a more
genuine state, though considerably tampered with in
Cinquecento days, particularly as regards the roofs of the
churches, which have in too many cases been altered from
low-gabled raftered ones to feeble imitations of Roman-
esque vaulting.
Several of the Lucca churches were founded at an earlier
period, and travellers (here, as elsewhere) are commonly
misled by their hand-books into the notion that the exist-
ing buildings belong to the time of their foundation, which
is but rarely the case ; on the contrary, there is generally
just enough to show that the existing structure belongs
almost entirely to a much more subsequent period.
