Church of St. Anthony of Padua and the Holy Guardian Angels

Along the road that leads to Sant'Anna di Stazzema, you come across the village of La Culla, entirely surrounded by olive groves and located on the southern slopes of Mount Gabberi at an altitude of about 450 meters above sea level. The church of Sant'Antonio da Padova e Santi Angeli Custodi, built on the terraced side of the hill, is located to the west of the historic village. Bordered to the west by a stone wall overlooking the steep slope, the building shows the opposite side bordered by the road that continues uphill towards the cemetery. The main facade, introduced by a small churchyard paved in architectural concrete, has the right side partly buried and the left side equipped with an additional floor, due to the inclination of the slope. On the eastern side of the churchyard, at a higher level than the church, stands the exposed stone bell tower: the sturdy tower consists of a base plinth, in which the access door opens and from which the shaft with narrow single-lancet windows branches off. The bell chamber with four large arched openings is topped by a domed roof set on an octagonal drum. The main façade, plastered and painted, is delimited laterally by two corner pilasters supporting the triangular pediment. The main portal opens in the centre, while on the left there is a secondary door that leads to a room used as a warehouse adjacent to the church. The interior has a single hall topped by a transept and a quadrangular apse. From the left arm a door leads into the sacristy, while from the right arm there is access to a warehouse.

Structure
Perimeter masonry in plastered stone: externally the main facade and the right side are plastered and painted, while the left side is in exposed stone. Internally painted and stained.

Plant
Planimetric scheme with a single nave ending in a transept and a quadrangular apse. An open door on the north wall of the left transept leads to the sacristy, while the one in the right transept leads to a storage room. The latter, due to the difference in level of the land on which it is built, is surmounted by another room used as a storage room with an entrance from the outside, via the road that runs alongside the church. On the opposite side of the church, on the contrary, there are rooms located under the sacristy, which are accessed from the embankment below.

Coverings
The hall has a barrel vault with lunettes, entirely plastered and frescoed, in which there are real and fictitious windows. The apse is covered by a plastered and frescoed sail vault, while the transepts have a plastered and frescoed barrel vault. Flat ceiling in wooden beams and joists and terracotta bricks for the warehouse. Flat ceiling in latero-cement for the sacristy.

Floors and paving
Flooring in white Carrara and Bardiglio marble tiles measuring 24x24 cm, arranged in a checkerboard pattern with diagonal installation for the flooring of the hall, transept and choir. Hexagonal tiles for the floor of the presbytery arranged to form a decorative floral motif. 'Salt and pepper' grit tiles with regular installation for the flooring of the sacristy. Rough concrete beaten floor for the warehouse.

Decorative elements
Next to the church is a bronze monument from 1981 made by Alfredo Belluomini: a man with a helmet and rifle is depicted looking at the sky and leaning on a stone structure engraved with the names of the victims of the war. Not far away is a bronze sculpture by Romano Cosci depicting Don Giuseppe Vangelisti, parish priest of Culla for sixty years. The gabled façade, plastered and painted, is delimited laterally by two corner pilasters and ends at the top with a triangular tympanum with a projecting and molded cone. In the center is the entrance portal framed in marble and equipped with a nineteenth-century wooden door, made by the workshop of Roberto Cipriani. At the top is a curved white marble panel depicting Saint Anthony of Padua, a work by Rino Giannini from 1971. Two iron benches are placed against the wall of the façade, on the sides of the main entrance. Inside, the church has a single nave with walls painted to imitate a covering of veined white marble slabs. The barrel vault with lunettes is decorated with late nineteenth-century mural paintings. On the counterfaçade, to the right of the door, there is a white marble column-shaped holy water stoup dated 1627. Not far away, on the right wall of the nave, a niche carved into the masonry houses a rectangular white marble baptismal font, set on a plastered masonry support and decorated with marmorino. The niche is decorated with a fake architectural frame and has an oval painting in the center depicting the Baptism of Jesus. On the opposite side of the hall, there is a twentieth-century white marble aedicule, containing the printed image of the Madonna del Rosario. Halfway down the nave, two late nineteenth-century wall confessionals face each other, made with three arches in white, gray and red marble. The presbytery area, raised one step above the rest of the hall and delimited by two marble balustrades from 1901, includes the transept and the apse apse. In the left transept there is an altar dedicated to the Madonna, as evidenced by the monogram of Mary in the center of the frontal. It is characterized by a white and gray marble table and a rectangular dossal with pilasters and architrave in red French marble, topped at the top by a pediment with broken sloping sides and a cartouche. At the center of the white marble panel, the small painting of the Madonna and Child is displayed. In the opposite arm is the altar dedicated to San Rocco, dated 1868: consisting of a white marble table and a dossal delimited laterally by fluted pilasters supporting a pediment with broken sloping sides and apical cartouche, it houses a niche in the center with the wooden statue of the saint. In the center of the presbytery is the High Altar in white marble with inlays of breccia and veined gray marble, made in 1864. On the sides, two red curtains close the space of the choir behind the altar, occupied by wooden seats from the 19th century. In the center of the back wall, stands the painted dossal, in the center of which opens a niche with the statue of Saint Anthony of Padua.