Church of San Francesco, Lucca

The Church of San Francesco in Lucca is a former Gothic-style Roman Catholic church and monastery located in San Francesco Square (Piazza San Francesco). Today, after an extensive restoration, it serves as the home of the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, a prestigious graduate institution.

The Franciscan order had a presence in Lucca since 1228, but the current structure of the church dates back to the 14th century. Built primarily out of gravel, the church features a single nave with a trussed roof and was completed in the early 15th century with the addition of three apsidal chapels. Its façade, adorned with white limestone, remained unfinished until the 20th century. The completion of the façade, including a rose window and four coats of arms representing the Franciscan Order, the city of Lucca, a rampant lion, and a fascio littorio, took place in 1930.

The interior of the church is characterized by frescoed walls and elegant marble altars decorated with painted altarpieces. It houses several tomb monuments, including those of notable historical figures such as Bishop Giovanni Guidiccioni, the condottiero Castruccio Castracani, and Ugolino Visconti, a governor of Pisa who was mentioned by Dante in Purgatory. The church is also the final resting place of composers Francesco Geminiani and Luigi Boccherini.

Among its artistic treasures, the church once held important paintings such as Noli me Tangere by Domenico Passignano and Nativity by Federico Zuccari. A panel by Francesco di Andrea Anguilla, originally commissioned for the church, is now housed in the Birmingham Museum of Art. Inside, remnants of a fresco cycle attributed to Baldassarre di Biagio of Florence can still be seen in one of the chapels.

Open to the public on weekends, the church remains one of Lucca’s most evocative architectural landmarks, blending the city's medieval past with its modern intellectual pursuits.