Pisa | Church of San Francesco

The first attestation of the Church of San Francesco dates back to 1233.

Paintings, from Giotto to Cimabue

The church, currently under restoration, is recognizable for its original and tall bell tower, which rests on a suspended arch, and for the large stained glass windows (1345), partly the result of 20th-century restorations in which one of the protagonists of Italian Liberty style, Galileo Chini, participated.

Financial difficulties diverted the city from continuing the work on the church, which was completed in the Medici era. The church was worked on by the finest Italian painters of the 13th and 14th centuries, from Giunta Pisano to Cimabue, from Giotto to Spinello Aretino. Some works, including two paintings by Cimabue, were taken during the Napoleonic occupation and exhibited at the Louvre Museum.

Here lies Count Ugolino

The facade, interrupted at the first order, does not reveal the majesty and richness of what is inside the church. Starting with the tomb of Count Ugolino: a plaque in the second chapel on the right recalls that the bones of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his family were buried here, later transferred to the adjacent cloister after the dismemberment of the tomb. As he died a traitor, the Count could not be buried alongside his family in the monumental family tomb inside the church.

Chapter Hall and Tomb of Francesco da Buti

The tour continues with the Chapter Hall, or the Hall of San Bonaventura, where the saint is said to have presided over the general chapter of the order in 1263. The hall was frescoed by the Giottesque school painter Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, the same artist of the sacristy of the Basilica of Santa Croce and the Loggia del Bigallo in Florence. Finally, the tomb of Francesco da Buti, a Pisan political scholar and the first commentator on Dante’s Divine Comedy.