Turning to the right under an archway from the damp, moss-grown court
over which the tower throws a perpetual shadow, a broad staircase,
closed by a door of open ironwork, leads to the first story (the
_piano nobile_). Here an anteroom, with Etruscan urns and fragments
of mediaeval sculpture let into the walls, gives access to a great
_sala_, or hall, where Paolo Guinigi entertained the citizens and
magnates of Lucca with sumptuous hospitality.

The vaulted ceiling, divided into compartments by heavy panels, is
profusely gilt, and painted in fresco by Venetian masters; but the
gold is dulled by age, and the frescoes are but dingy patches of what
once was color. The walls, ornamented with Flemish tapestry, represent
the Seven Labors of Hercules--the bright colors all faded out
and blurred like the frescoes. Above, on the surface of polished
walnut-wood, between the tapestry and the ceiling, are hung suits of
mail, helmets, shields, swords, lances, and tattered banners.

Every separate piece has its history. Each lance, in the hand of some
mediaeval hero of the name, has transfixed a foe, every sword has been
dyed in the life-blood of a Ghibelline.

At the four corners of the hall are four doorways corresponding
to each other. Before each doorway hang curtains of Genoa velvet,
embroidered in gold with the Guinigi arms surmounted by a princely
coronet. Time has mellowed these once crimson curtains to dingy red.
From the hall, entered by these four doors, open out endless suites
of rooms, enriched with the spoils of war and the splendor of feudal
times. Not a chair, not a table, has been renewed, or even shifted
from its place, since the fourteenth century, when Paolo Guinigi