I Gelsi di Lucca · Our story
A silk thread runs through Lucca. And leads us here.
A city of merchants and weavers, historic streets and a hidden garden in the old town. This is the story woven into the name I Gelsi di Lucca.
01 / The name
Why we are called I Gelsi
The mulberry is more than a tree. For centuries, its leaves fed the silkworms from which silk threads are produced. The name I Gelsi di Lucca pays tribute to this bond between nature and skilled craftsmanship, a bond that helped shape the city’s identity.
We chose this name for our three residences and private garden: a simple, meaningful way of connecting today’s hospitality with Lucca’s past.
02 / The city of silk
When Lucca dressed Europe
In the Middle Ages, Lucca was one of the West’s leading silk-manufacturing centres. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, highly skilled artisans made exquisite patterned silks and other precious fabrics, later including velvet. Lucchese merchants traded them across Europe.
Lucca’s prosperity came chiefly from manufacturing and trading finished fabrics. Raw silk also arrived from distant regions, while the city brought together technical knowledge, creativity and trade networks. Olive groves and other crops were likewise part of the surrounding landscape and economy.
03 / The architecture of time
One address, many centuries
I Gelsi stands on Via Michele Rosi, in the old Borghi area, a neighbourhood that grew beside the northern stretch of Lucca’s medieval walls. Its streets, courtyards and buildings bear witness to a city shaped by successive centuries.
According to the historical information available for the property, the complex has a fourteenth-century core and underwent changes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This building-specific chronology remains to be checked against archival records, independently of the well-documented history of Lucca’s silk industry.
04 / The story continues
Today, a place to pause
Today this address is home to Gelso Rosso, Gelso Moro and Gelso Bianco, alongside a secluded private garden within Lucca’s old city. Keeping the name I Gelsi means carrying forward a conversation between traces of the past and the moments created here today.