Monumental Church of San Francesco

Dense with history, the beautiful church is undoubtedly the most loved by the population of Pescia. Restored around the twenties of the XX century, the present church has a late fourteenth century origin. From the documentations we know that already in the first half of the fourteenth century there was a church dedicated to the Saint of Assisi in Pescia. A beautiful local legend conveys the news that Francis visited the community of Pescia around 1211. On that occasion He was a guest of the Orlandi family who later built a small oratory from which the present church would have its origin. We know that around 1241 the construction of the great convent and the ecclesiastical building was certainly started. On August 28 1364, in this church, in the presence of the papal legates, the general of the Franciscan Order and the ambassadors of Lucca and Pisa, peace was concluded between the two powers. You can find many works of art inside; the plan is a Latin cross and the transept is characterized by the presence of two stone altars and beautiful canvases. The first chapel on the left was built between 1453 and 1458 by the will of the brothers Antonio and Giovanni Cardini; the design of the original furniture is attributed to Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti called the Buggiano , a pupil and adoptive son of Filippo Brunelleschi. In the second chapel of the Immaculate Conception (16th century), dedicated today to the fallen of the First World War, there is the fourteenth century statue of the Virgin with child that in 1506 would have given miraculous signs. The most famous pictorial work found in the Franciscan church is the 1235 table by Lucca Bonaventura Berlinghieri illustrating St. Francis with six stories on the sides. It is the oldest and most famous representation in the world of the Saint. On the altars of the transept you can admirate: on the right, the chapel of S. Carlo Borromeo with the beautiful canvas by Rodomonte Pieri, a pupil of Cortona; on the left the chapel of the Barba family, with the sixteenth century Canvas by Iacopo Ligozzi representing the martyrdom of St. Dorotea (patron saint of the city) 1595. The three chapels are adorned with frescoes; On the altar of the chapel of St. Anne is placed the famous triptych of Nanni by Jacopo Pistoiese (15th century) representing Saint Anne, put between the saints Simone, Thaddeo, Lorenzo and Domenico. In the central chapel of the patronage of the Obizzi family you can find remains of frescoes by Antonio Vite (1388), as well as the seventeenth-century canvas of the Miracle of the Mula by Antonio Martinelli. The Nucci chapel is adorned with frescoes from the early fifteenth century by the school of Lorenzo di Bicci; in the central part is visible the Transit of the Virgin.