by Sandy Brown
We’re back. This inaugurates a new series that goes deeper into Lucca’s streetscapes by telling the stories behind historical plaques. These monuments attest to events of the past, now forgotten but placed by Lucca’s residents so that some stories will not be forgotten.
Walk down Via Santa Croce and you might notice a small, weathered marble plaque above the door of a doctor’s office. The inscription is brief, but behind it lies a story of resistance, courage, and the price paid by ordinary citizens during Lucca’s darkest years.
Roberto Bartolozzi (1914–1944) was a telephone technician with the TETI company. Born in La Spezia, he was transferred to Lucca after bombings on the Ligurian coast damaged the telephone network. Outwardly, he lived a quiet life—but beneath the surface he became one of the city’s most active anti-fascist organizers.
Using his technical work as cover, Bartolozzi helped create and coordinate the SAP – Squadre di Azione Patriottica. These small partisan units carried out sabotage, hid fugitive Allied fighters, transported Jews to safety, and circulated information in and out of occupied Lucca. Weapons, messages, and escape routes moved silently through workshops, homes, and offices—including the TETI building on Via Santa Croce.
Lucca under Nazi and Fascist rule
After the armistice of September 1943, Lucca fell under direct Nazi occupation, supported by remaining fascist militia and secret police. German troops guarded the gates, requisitioned villas, and used schools as barracks. Allied prisoners of war and downed pilots were secretly guided through the city toward safe houses in the Garfagnana and Apuan Alps.
The city’s small Jewish community suffered arrests, forced registration, and deportations. The Synagogue of Lucca, located in Via del Gallo n. 6, was closed; many members went into hiding or fled. Some were captured and sent to concentration camps.
In this atmosphere of fear, the Resistance organized quietly. Bartolozzi’s office, like many ordinary workplaces, became a node in a hidden network determined not to surrender the city’s dignity.
The final day
On 29 June 1944, Bartolozzi led two SAP teams in an operation to disarm a Carabinieri barracks. When German troops suddenly appeared, the mission was aborted and weapons hidden. As the group slipped away toward Piazza San Quirico, fascist UPI agents intercepted them. Bartolozzi fled down a narrow stone passage but was shot and captured. He died of his wounds in the hospital.
After Bartolozzi: Lucca’s Liberation
Bartolozzi was killed on the night of 29–30 June 1944, at a moment when tension in the city was reaching breaking point. In late June and early July, the German command began forced evacuations, arrests, and military withdrawals from the flatlands around Lucca as Allied forces pushed north from Pisa and Livorno.
The Nazis left Lucca on 4 September 1944, retreating toward the Gothic Line in the Apuan mountains. The following day — 5 September 1944 — Allied troops entered and liberated the city.
Their arrival marked the end of one year of direct occupation, mass deportations, reprisals, and economic collapse.
Lucca was one of the first major Tuscan cities to be freed intact. No large-scale urban battle was fought inside the walls; German forces chose to abandon the city rather than defend it street by street. Partisan groups emerged from hiding to guide the Allies through the gates, and bells began ringing for the first time in months. The city’s Jewish survivors and many families who had lived underground reappeared and reclaimed their homes. The Resistance leaders who remained alive rebuilt political life from the rubble.
For Lucca, 5 September is still the symbolic end of the occupation and the day the city regained its dignity and freedom—just ten weeks after Bartolozzi’s death.
The plaques and what they say
The plaque on Via Santa Croce 62 reads:
Italian:
“Il 29 giugno 1944 colpito dal piombo fascista, decedeva Roberto Bartolozzi.
Il ricordo del suo fulgido esempio di lavoratore e di patriota resti indelebile ai posteri.”English:
“On 29 June 1944, struck down by fascist bullets, died Roberto Bartolozzi.
May the memory of his shining example as a worker and patriot remain indelible for future generations.”
A second memorial stands where he was shot, in Piazzetta San Quirico, a few hundred meters from Via Santa Croce:
Italian:
“Selvaggia ferocia spezzò in questo luogo la vita di Roberto Bartolozzi.
Si congiunse egli alla schiera dei martiri che mai si piegarono durante la lunga spietata tirannide, versando sangue generoso perché rifiorissero la libertà, la giustizia, il diritto, rinascese a nuova vita l’Italia.”English:
“Savage cruelty ended the life of Roberto Bartolozzi in this place.
He joined the ranks of the martyrs who never bowed during the long, merciless tyranny,
shedding generous blood so that liberty, justice, and the rule of law might bloom again
and Italy be reborn to new life.”
For many, these plaques go unseen—part of the stone and silence of Lucca’s centuries-old walls. But together, they form a short “memory walk” that traces one man’s daily labor, his resistance, his final escape, and the spot where he fell.
A short Memory Walk
Start: Via Santa Croce
At the former TETI offices, the first plaque recalls Bartolozzi as a “worker and patriot.”
End: Piazzetta San Quirico
Across from the Ristorante All’Olivo is the location of the shooting. The second plaque honors him among “the martyrs who never bowed.” This former church once housed “Cinema Littorio” and after the shooting, Bartolozzi fled to the cinema’s projection booth, where he was found mortally wounded. More details of the struggle can be found here.
In telling Bartolozzi’s story, Lucca remembers that the struggle for liberation was not won only in mountains or battlefields. It lived in its alleyways, its shops, and its ordinary workers—people who refused to yield even when the city lay under occupation.
