Basilica of San Frediano

The architecture of the Basilica of San Frediano well represents the characteristics of Romanesque Lucca before the influences of the nearby Pisa, in particular of the Cathedral of Buscheto, and workers from northern Italy change its traditional character.

The church still has a simple type of early Christian basilica plan, with curtain walls smooth, without projections or complex joints of the arches, and architectural elements are all of Roman tradition, such as architraves and columns of the facade and the apse, the windows niche, the specially carved composite capitals.

These same features are found - in a stadium even purer - in the nearby church of St. Alexander, which includes the remains of an older building in which every element, from the paths proportional to the quality of the walls, the arrangement of unusual materials to bare corinzieggianti capitals, is all ancient Roman traditions.

It consists of a nave and two aisles with arches supported by columns with Roman and Romanesque capitals.

It is composed of a bowl, covered with a tempietto, resting on pillars, inside a circular basin.

Behind this font, higher on the wall, are two 15th century glazed terracotta lunettes: The Annunciation and St. Bartholomew, both attributed to the school of Andrea della Robbia.

The Trenta chapel in the left aisle houses the polyptych of the Virgin and the Child, a 15th-century masterpiece by Jacopo della Quercia, carved with the help of his assistant Giovanni da Imola.

Below the altar is a Roman sarcophagus with the body of St Richard the Pilgrim, an English “king” (of Wessex), who died in Lucca in 722 while on pilgrimage to Rome.

On the marble floor lies a tombstone of Lorenzo Trenta and his wife, equally from the hand of Jacopo della Quercia.

The sgraffiti are drawn in the art technique of trompe l’oeil, giving a false perspective and the illusion of a column.