News about Camaiore
4 – NEWS ABOUT CAMAIORE
amaiore lies to the south-west of the Apuan Alps, set in a basin. Its name comes from the Latin Campus Maior, that is Greater Field, and it boasts a very ancient history: crossed by Neanderthals in prehistory, as the town’s Archaeological Museum describes well, it was inhabited by Ligurians, Etruscans and then Romans. The important Via Francigena passes through here, and by 761 it already had the monastery of San Pietro, today known as the Badia di San Pietro; it grew considerably in the Middle Ages. In the surrounding area the Lombard settlements built villas and castles. From 1200 it passed under the rule of Lucca, which thereby secured its outlet to the sea at the Motrone ditch.
LA TERRANUOVA
Lucca, having conquered and subdued the peoples settled in the castles on the hills above Camaiore, arranged — through Guiscardo da Pietrasanta of Milan — for a new town to be designed, added to the small early village on the Via Francigena; it was called Terranuova and the inhabitants of the castles were forced to move here.
It is worth noting that Camaiore’s rectangular plan, with the regularity of its streets and the position of its square, matches the urban layout of Pietrasanta: the two towns look like twins, conceived and built by the same architect around the middle of the thirteenth century.
BADIA DI CAMAIORE
Coming down from Monte Magno on the left, just before entering the town, stands the Badia, an ancient monastery once protected by castle walls, built by the Lombards as the earliest document, from the year 761, attests. The church, preceded by a magnificent entrance portal, besides its perfect and graceful Romanesque style, holds two frescoes of the Giottesque school depicting Saint Mary of Egypt and the Pietà, the latter framed by an altar in white Carrara marble, built to honour her as a worker of miracles. On the north side of the church opens the cloister, from which one could reach the rooms used by the Benedictine monks, replaced in the first half of the thirteenth century by the Florensian monks, followers of Joachim of Fiore.
TEATRO DELL’OLIVO
You enter the town along the main street, and on the left stands the Teatro dell’Olivo. It rises on the site once occupied by a wool stretching works: built during the sixteenth century, the works failed and its owner fled the town. In 1649 the Accademia dei Deboli, an association formed by a group of Camaiore citizens, asked to reopen the building so that it could host comedies and other stage performances. From 1720 onwards some work was carried out on the building and the first boxes were constructed. But the moment of true rebirth for the theatre was 1772, with the founding of the Compagnia del Teatro dell’Olivo. In 1927 the ceiling decorations were executed. After various vicissitudes, including those of the world war, the Teatro dell’Olivo was definitively reopened in 2003.
PALAZZO TORI-MASSONI
It is one of the most important palaces in the historic centre. Today a branch office of the Municipality of Camaiore, Palazzo Tori-Massoni (16th–17th century) stands near Piazza Armando Diaz in the historic centre of Camaiore. It has three floors plus a basement, among which are divided the Civic Archaeological Museum, the Municipal Library named after Michele Rosi and the Municipal Historical Archive. Inspired by the Lucchese palaces of the Civitali school, inside there is a courtyard with balustrades and small columns of Carrara marble, and in its rooms it is possible to visit a small archaeological museum where photographs and archaeological finds recount much of the history of the municipality and of the small villages around it.
CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE
And here we are in the centre of Camaiore, where many traces tell of its history, beginning with Via IV Novembre, the ancient Via Francigena. Here, on today’s Piazzetta Diaz, stood a church whose ruins emerged in recent archaeological excavations, dated to the ninth century but demolished two centuries later, its ground given over to a cemetery. Two metres away you can visit the small Romanesque church of San Michele, mentioned in the year 1180, only slightly larger than the first.
MUSEUM OF SACRED ART AND CIVIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM
Opposite the church of San Michele you can visit the Museum of Sacred Art with its valuable works, among them a magnificent tapestry from the year 1516, as well as the Virgin Annunciate by Matteo Civitali, a wooden statue of Saint Anthony by Valdambrino and many other works of art.
On the same small square stands the Camaiore Civic Archaeological Museum, which holds the archaeological evidence of the area. In front of the Church of San Michele, a hospital for the poor and for pilgrims was built in the twelfth century.
PIAZZA SAN BERNARDINO, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA ASSUNTA AND CIVIC TOWER
From Piazzetta Diaz, heading north, you come to Camaiore’s central street, and after about a hundred metres Piazza San Bernardino opens up, the square of the historic centre, which preserves fine buildings.
Via XX Settembre flows into it, where instead stand Palazzo Papini, seat of the Prioria since 1966, and the Town Hall, its façade on three storeys.
CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA ASSUNTA
The thirteenth-century church of Santa Maria Assunta was raised to a Collegiate church in the sixteenth century. Inside it preserves notable works of art, above all a fourteenth-century wooden crucifix of the German school attributed to the Master of Camaiore. Alongside the altars can be seen the canvases of Giovanni Marracci of Torcigliano, a well-known follower of Pietro da Cortona. The church was built around 1255 to meet the religious needs of the growing population.
CIVIC TOWER
Beside the Church of Santa Maria Assunta stands the civic tower of the same period, 33 metres high, which holds inside a magnificent stone staircase of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
PALAZZO DEL VICARIO
Next to the Bell Tower stands the Palazzo del Vicario, now the seat of the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. Built in the fourteenth century, at first on two floors, it housed the Vicar’s residence above and the seat of the town council in the so-called «Loggia» on the ground floor. Camaiore was at that time one of the Vicariates of the municipality of Lucca, under the Lucchese statute of 1308; even so, the town kept the ancient privileges it had received from previous lords. The vicar was appointed directly by the Central Government and remained in office six months, administering justice and collecting the taxes owed to Lucca.
THE CASTLE WALLS
At the far end of Piazza San Bernardino you can see the ancient Porta Lombricese, built at the time the castle walls were raised, walls with a perimeter of 1,470 metres protecting the town of Camaiore. Thirteen projecting turrets were distributed along the crenellated walls. Today only a lowered stretch about 200 metres long survives, along Via delle Murette. Part of the castle walls came to light recently, during the redevelopment works on Piazza XXIX Maggio.
SAN VINCENZO HOSPITAL
Returning to the Via Francigena towards the sea you come to the disused hospital of San Vincenzo, founded in the year 1086 by the nobles of Corvaia and enlarged several times.
THE FRANCISCAN FRIARY AI FRATI
Less than a kilometre from the centre of Camaiore, heading towards the sea, you come upon the seventeenth-century Franciscan Friary of San Lazzaro on your right. Near this friary there had been, since the fourteenth century, a hospital for the sick poor and for pilgrims, dedicated to San Lazzaro, of which the Chapel of the Holy Crucifix remains, visible from the road.
A ROMAN-ERA FARM AT CAPEZZANO
On the road to Pietrasanta, at Capezzano Pianore in 1993, during the building of a small villa, the remains of a large Roman-era farm came to light, third to fourth century AD. The structure of a sizeable oil-pressing plant emerged from it. The hills are still rich in olive trees today, and produce an excellent oil.