I write this having just had the good fortune to spend five days in the city of Lucca, in Tuscany, Central Italy. Like much of the country, Lucca is steeped in rich history, but to me there’s something extra special about it; in many ways it’s the very best of Italy in a microcosm. Not wanting to leave, I spent plenty of time over espresso and Peroni trying to pinpoint exactly why.
Lucca’s history predates Roman colonisation (180 BC) – though its old town centre retains a classic Roman rectangular grid street plan. Narrow and cobbled; cars almost completely prohibited – but with plenty of Ape 50s and everybody on bicycles.
A description of Lucca’s noteworthy historical events would require 700 pages (not 700 words) – from the Lucca conference of 56 BC (at which Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus reaffirmed their political alliance), through multiple religious shifts, Napoleonic conquest and the birth of Puccini (composer of La Bohème and Madame Butterfly). Lucca seems to have played a role in so many diverse facets of Italian development and culture, and its architecture speaks to this very fact. Spanning centuries, beautifully preserved and reflecting the intensity of two thousand years of stories, Lucca is quintessential. It’s old – but it’s not tired; it’s like a thriving secret garden.
Lucca’s people look good. They don’t hurry – but they’re still on their way somewhere. Traditions are observed – but Lucca doesn’t feel trapped by its past. The balance seems just right – classic time-honoured Italian lifestyle – diet, transport, social life, art and culture – with the right sense of connection to modernity (and the future). All without having fallen into the trap of an homogenised worldwide-web-globo-culture.
As I said, after five days I didn’t want to leave – in fact I was feeling more inspired and creative than ever – but in a way that wasn’t just a romantic holiday notion – in a way that was sustainable.
So what’s Lucca’s secret sauce? I reckon it’s got something to do with the massive 4km long walls that have surrounded it in one form or another since the second century BC. That became monumental Renaissance walls in the sixteenth century. The thing about these walls is that while still completely intact, their gates have remained open for 200 or so years. In 1799, Maria Luisa of Bourbon declared they should become a public walking (and today, cycling) circuit planned out beautifully for the recreation of the city – rather than for its defence.
In a strange way, Lucca is a sort of gated community – but without any gates, and I think this may play a part in its magic. For these walls act as an almost perfect filter, a physical reminder of marking conscious choices – of what to embrace and what to reject – what to change and what to allow to remain the same. And in this modern world of being confronted with an overwhelming barrage of choices, second-by-second, minute-by-minute, day-by-day – having that physical reminder of making considered choice is actually highly liberating.
It’s something we in the uncensored, free information world all secretly crave – a marketing buzz-phrase for it is ‘freedom within a framework’. It’s why reality TV shows theoretically based on “cookery” or “home renovation” captivate us so. What’s in? What’s out? It’s arguably what drives test match cricket. Which ball to hit – which ball to leave?
The art of restraint, of selectivity, is tough to master. Yet in our business of creativity it’s absolutely necessary. It’s what the very best ECDs do so well. What ideas get cocooned and protected? Which get nurtured and evolved? Which get outright rejected? It’s a skill we all need to work on. Because all of us have a hand in laying the bricks that build the right kind of wall – from the basic blocks of a client brief, all the way up – to give our ideas the best shot at flourishing in a Lucca-like creative garden.