House and Museum Puccini - It was approximately in 1815 when the Puccini family moved into the house in Corte S. Lorenzo, after the premature death of Domenico, talented opera composer, on the wishes of his widow Angela Cerù. In that house, on the 22nd December 1858 Giacomo Puccini was born, the last of a great dynasty of musicians beginning with Giacomo senior in 1712. Giacomo`s parents, Michele Puccini and Albina Magi, were already living in the house together with the grandmother Angela, sisters Otilia, Tomaide, Maria Nitteti and Iginia, their domestic help; a true gynaeceum to which were later added Ramelde and Macrina, and that Giacomo would share, at the death of his father and until his move to Milan where he continued his studies, with his brother Domenico Michele.

This large house although barely sufficient to house such a numerous family, three members of which were musicians, has come down to us today with its rooms divided as they originally were. The furniture and furnishings are also original: precious fragments of the life of one of the greatest composers in the history of music who has given the world immmortal pages of a melodramma which with him reached its apex only then to rapidly loose itself in new musical forms.

In the house there are souvenirs of unforgettable moments in the career of Giacomo Puccini: honours, autographs of his youthful compositions such as the Mass for four voices or the "Capriccio Sinfonico", letters written or received by family members, the piano on which he began his unfinished masterpiece "Turandot" in his villa in Viareggio, which pervades these rooms also thanks to the splendid costume on display designed by Brunelleschi for the first night ever at the New York Metropolitan in 1926 and donated by the singer Maria Jeritza to the Puccini Foundation.

However, what is more striking for their bare drammatic detail, are the last few sheets of paper which describe the days preceding his death, on the 29th November 1924: after a throat operation, from his hospital bed in Brussels, he could only write down on paper what his voice could no longer express, a mixture of hope and desperation on those fragments of paper displayed in the glass showcase, up until that last "Elvira povera donna, finita..." which sums up the story of a man whose feelings had found their true expression more in music than in daily life.

Among the paintings on display there are portraits of Giacomo Senior and his wife Angela by Giovanni Domenico Lombardi, of Antonio Puccini, of the family coat of arms which Giacomo jealously guarded, and a splendid portrait by Leonetto Cappiello, dated 1899 with a dedication.

In the square next to the house, Piazza Citadella which takes its name from the 17th century palace of the same name, stands the only monument dedicated to the great composer, work of the sculptor Vito Tongiani in 1994. ... from "Lucca" (Apt Lucca)