Pisa | Church S. Pietro in Vinculis or S. Pierino

The church in Pisa Romanesque style with original facade in stone ashlars is one of the three churches of the Lombard period, along with the Church of Santa Cristina on the Arno River (where the saint received the stigmata) and Santa Margherita, now disappeared. In Pisa is known as the Church of San Pierino, as well as the adjacent square (Piazza Cairoli) is known as Piazza della Berlina.

The underground floor is occupied by a beautiful old crypt: with four naves and cross vaults partly decorated with frescoes of the 14th century, it was used as a cemetery, so that on some columns you can still read the names of the people buried.

The interior with three naves preserves a marble floor in “cosmatesque” style, that is decorated with mosaic polychrome geometric motifs of Byzantine tradition (12th century).

In the church was kept for two centuries the “Corpus Iuris Civili” (called “Pandette Pisane“), a very important text because it collected the laws of the Roman Empire, as the Byzantine emperor Justinian I had wanted.

The history of the Pandette is controversial: in 1137 the Pisans took possession of the Pandette after the sack of Amalfi. In 1406 the Florentines brought it back to their city as spoils of war. Since then the collection has been improperly christened Pandette Fiorentine and kept in the Laurentian Library, while in the church only the copy of two pages of the Corpus remained.