La Via della Seta – The Silk Road

For more than a thousand years, an 8.000 kilometre long glistening thread of silk has united the town of Lucca with that of Hangzhou (China), both historical capitals of the production and diffusion of silk.

Today, as part of the celebrations for the Chinese Cultural Year in Italy, the routes described by Marco Polo are retold through the exhibition La Via della Seta (The Silk Road), promoted by Lucca Town Council in collaboration with the Martino Martini Study Centre and the Chinese National Silk Museum – Hangzhou.

The golden age of the commercial and above all cultural link between the East and West is expressed through more than one hundred and thirty masterpieces of silk art from China, Central Asia and Lucca, with rare pieces covering more than one thousand years of history – from the Tang to the Ming dynasty – using a detailed documentary and bibliographical display.
Historians recognise the “Silk Road” as a fundamental element in the evolution of human civilization in general, with Lucca as its European capital during the Middle Ages. Here, the most valuable silk from all over Asia was woven into fabrics of exceptional quality, and exported all over Europe. In this period the town achieved an outstanding synthesis between research, production and trade.
This exhibition reinforces the cultural link between Lucca and the town of Hangzhou, co-organiser of the event and old capital of the Southern Song dynasty. Hangzhou, China’s main past and present centre of silk production, is named by Marco Polo in his Books of the Marvels of the World and, from this year, is included in the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites, just as Lucca is presently nominated to become a World Heritage Site as one of the occidental terminals of the Silk Road.
The exhibition is divided into three sections: the first, dedicated to Lucca and its role as an international junction of silk production, with objects from public and private Lucca collections; the second, dedicated to silk production and trade between China, Central Asia and the Mediterranean, with objects from the collections of the Chinese National Silk Museum in Hangzhou and other public and private Italian institutions; and the third, is dedicated to the traditional production techniques of the Islamic and Byzantine world and their diffusion in Europe, with objects from private Italian collections.