daily transgressions of Government prohibitions

Having discovered the Walls, the people of Lucca appreciated them not only as a military element for the defence of the city but, above all, as a new space for their lives, very often using them for purposes that the Government did not approve of. Hence the constant recourse to laws and regulations that, like Manzoni's 'grida' (cries), did not yield results.

For centuries, in the cold seasons, the city's poor used to devise ways to steal fallen wood and even cut branches from trees at night. In summer, to escape the heat, many went to the Walls and the women, heedless of the prohibitions, stretched ropes between the trees of the inner escarpment to hang clothes out to dry.
Even the soldiers guarding the Walls had turned keeps and bastions into vegetable gardens where they grew vegetables.

Outside, along the moat, flax was soaked, hence 'spoiling' the water. In the area of the 'tagliata', of vital importance for the defence of the city, the Government's increasingly frequent supervision revealed very tall hedges, arbours full of grapes, and then mulberry, walnut, fig and poplar trees. Horses, sheep, mules grazed on the grassy glacises and along the moat and pigs paddled, indifferent to the soldiers' surveillance.