The church of Santa Maria Forisportam, also known in Lucca as Santa Maria Bianca, is so called because it was originally located outside the Roman walls, just outside the eastern gate into the city.
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ADDRESS: Piazza Santa Maria Forisportam (o della Colonna Mozza) Lucca
The square is known among the people of Lucca as Piazza della colonna mozza due to the presence of a Roman granite column, used in the Middle Ages as the arrival point for knights participating in the city's palio. All around there are imposing palaces, once the sumptuous residences of the city's rich and powerful merchant families.
A parchment dating back to 768 testifies to the existence of the church of Santa Maria Forisportam as early as the 8th century, well before the construction of the medieval city walls in the 12th century, erected to protect the city and enclose within it the new villages that had developed outside the ancient walls.
The primitive church was rebuilt in Romanesque style in the 12th century and restored in the 16th century with modifications that changed its appearance. The interior retained the three-nave floor plan, but the original truss roof was replaced with cross vaults. The structure was raised overall with brick walls, clearly visible on the outside: the contrast of the bricks with the white of the medieval stones is striking.
The people of Lucca call the church Santa Maria Bianca for the beautiful and austere white stone façade from Santa Maria del Giudice, simple and perfect with its arches supported by half-columns, the three portals surmounted by architraves and lunettes decorated in classical style, and the two overlapping loggias in the upper part of the façade, from which majestic and proud lions observe the square. Particularly noteworthy is the slab with the enthroned Virgin and Child in the lunette of the left portal.
There are other works of art inside: at the altars, two canvases by Giovan Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino, Saint Lucy (1642) and Assumption between Saints Francis and Alexander (1643), and another canvas by Alessandro Ardenti, The Trinity with Saints Francis and Jerome.
An interesting curiosity. In the church there is a camera obscura solar sundial, formed by an oblique line on the floor in front of the high altar and a hole in the wall: when the beam of light filtering through the hole meets the line on the floor, it means that the sun has reached its maximum height, thus indicating noon in Lucca (a plaque reads 7 minutes and 55 seconds later than Rome Standard Time).