Description
The Church of San Francesco is the second largest church in Pisa, after the cathedral. It stands in the square of the same name, with its cloister, and is a great example of Franciscan single-nave architecture.
What strikes you is the nave, 18 meters wide and then up to 22 near the transept, among the widest of Tuscan churches. Above you can see the exposed wooden trusses.
The bell tower is bold: inside, it rests on brackets on two sides. The façade in San Giuliano marble, begun in the fourteenth century, was only finished in 1603, in the Medici era.
Don't miss the frescoes of the Chapter House, by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini (1392), and those of the sacristy, by Taddeo di Bartolo (1397). They are still very expressive today, even if not perfectly preserved.
On the Counter-Reformation altars there are large canvases by the best Tuscan artists of the time, such as the Nativity by Cigoli and the Assumption by Ventura Salimbeni. Of the rich fourteenth-century frescoes only fragments and sinopias remain.
Count Ugolino della Gherardesca is buried here, with his sons and grandsons: those who, according to Dante, died of hunger in the tower. As a traitor, Ugolino was placed in the cloister, outside the great family tomb.
Only in the early twentieth century were his supposed remains moved to the chapel inside the church, after the great family tomb had been broken up and moved to various places.
Then the church lost almost everything. Napoleonic looting took to the Louvre Cimabue's Maestà, Giotto's Stigmata of Saint Francis and a painting by Benozzo Gozzoli. The only altarpiece saved, by Giunta Pisano, is now in the Museo di San Matteo.
In 1863 the church was deconsecrated and became a barracks, then a warehouse. It reopened for worship in 1901, with new stained-glass windows designed by Galileo Chini and Francesco Mossmeyer, thanks to a committee of citizens.
What strikes you is the nave, 18 meters wide and then up to 22 near the transept, among the widest of Tuscan churches. Above you can see the exposed wooden trusses.
The bell tower is bold: inside, it rests on brackets on two sides. The façade in San Giuliano marble, begun in the fourteenth century, was only finished in 1603, in the Medici era.
Don't miss the frescoes of the Chapter House, by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini (1392), and those of the sacristy, by Taddeo di Bartolo (1397). They are still very expressive today, even if not perfectly preserved.
On the Counter-Reformation altars there are large canvases by the best Tuscan artists of the time, such as the Nativity by Cigoli and the Assumption by Ventura Salimbeni. Of the rich fourteenth-century frescoes only fragments and sinopias remain.
Count Ugolino della Gherardesca is buried here, with his sons and grandsons: those who, according to Dante, died of hunger in the tower. As a traitor, Ugolino was placed in the cloister, outside the great family tomb.
Only in the early twentieth century were his supposed remains moved to the chapel inside the church, after the great family tomb had been broken up and moved to various places.
Then the church lost almost everything. Napoleonic looting took to the Louvre Cimabue's Maestà, Giotto's Stigmata of Saint Francis and a painting by Benozzo Gozzoli. The only altarpiece saved, by Giunta Pisano, is now in the Museo di San Matteo.
In 1863 the church was deconsecrated and became a barracks, then a warehouse. It reopened for worship in 1901, with new stained-glass windows designed by Galileo Chini and Francesco Mossmeyer, thanks to a committee of citizens.