Walking, loitering, getting lost in the alleys is still the best strategy for those in search of the true breath of things.
To the incorruptible of the traveller category, a suggestion (in a low voice of course), a visit to one of the city's less exposed and less frequented places: the church of Santa Maria Corteorlandini.

One of the many churches in Lucca, and one of the best examples of the city's Baroque, Santa Maria Corteorlandini is an ancient church of early medieval foundation that owes its bizarre name to the presence of the court of the Longobard Rolandinghi family, the ‘Curtis Rolandinga’.

As the inscription next to the sacristy door recalls, the church was completely rebuilt in 1188 by Master Guido, but little remains of that Romanesque church; in fact, two major renovations affected the church at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 18th century and changed its appearance forever.

Astonishment and wonder

are the first tangible sensations we feel once we enter the church of Santa Maria Corteorlandini, wonder and amazement at the grand architectural spectacle that is both bizarre and glorious.
It is almost a theatrical play because none of this transpires from the square, nothing seems to draw our attention as we walk through the alleyways outside. The church is too big for the space of the square in front, too tall to fit into the canons of classical beauty, too disharmonious to imagine its internal harmony. From the outside, the church of Santa Maria Corteorlandini appears as a large stone container that does not arouse particular curiosity.

Gilded stuccoes and frescoes, polychrome marble and large altars, pulpits clinging to columns and fake windows with painted balconies, powerfully reveal the language of the time, committed to touching people's souls and feelings with grandiose and monumental forms.
The organ's painted chancel, with its balustrade of small columns and suspended steps... ‘is ‘well worth a mass’ or at least the time for a visit to this jewel of Lucchese Baroque architecture.

Through the door on the left side of the church, one enters a room in which a chapel was built in 1662 in imitation of the Holy House of Loreto, which allowed those who could not afford a long pilgrimage to pray in the simplicity of stone. Precisely because of the presence of Our Lady of Loreto, Santa Maria Corteorlandini has been popularly called Santa Maria Nera for centuries.

The Christmas festivities

are the best time to visit this church. In fact, from 8 December to Epiphany, the dressed nativity scene is exhibited, a rare example of a historical nativity scene from the late 17th century, which is distinguished by its Lucchese-made fabrics.
The Neapolitan provenance of some of the statues, particularly those depicting the people, reminds us of the great diffusion that the Perthenopean crib had in the Baroque period.
Relations between Lucca and Naples had already been consolidated for some time, thanks to the silk trade and the remarkable musical tradition of both cities. At the end of the 17th century, in the church of Santa Maria Nera, came all the theatricality of the new Neapolitan nativity scene, which tended to mix the sacred and the profane, depicting the everyday life that animated small squares, streets and alleys. Thus statues of popular characters such as beggars, tavern owners, cobblers, the humble and the derelict appeared in the nativity scene in Lucca. The mannequins in the nativity scene of Santa Maria Nera have wooden heads and limbs, but with an iron wire core covered in tow that allows the statues to have more plastic poses. Thus, it is not only the historicity that makes it extraordinary, but also the originality of the large statues with articulated wooden joints and the beauty of the Magi's cloaks, in particular the green velvet one dating back to the early 17th century, which highlights the ancient Lucchese mastery of cloth-making.

photo Roberto Giomi