Pisa Museo Aperto

Luogo

In the Middle Ages, the Benedictine church and monastery of San Michele in Borgo was one of the richest and most powerful ecclesiastical institutions in the city. The church was enlarged in the 11th century thanks to the intervention of the founder of the monastery, Abbot Bono, who, when he arrived from the Abbey of Nonantola, stated to have found beside the church only a tugurium (hovel) and a uncompleted tower. In the space of a few years, the monastery underwent development to the point that it was protagonist in aggregating the urban area between Ponte di Mezzo (link: ponte Vecchio/ponte di Mezzo), the modern Piazza delle Vettovaglie (link: piazza delle Vettovaglie), and the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. In 1077, Pope Gregory VII authorized the already conspicuous patrimony of the monastery, which was later enriched by the privileges granted by Pope Honorius III and Pope Gregory IX, in the first half of the 1200s.
Due to its strategic location, along Via di Borgo and next to Ponte Vecchio, in the heart of the urban commercial centre, the monastery rapidly extended its property, also thanks to the donations from the rich mercantile and noble families who lived there. The church is the result of many enlargements and alterations, especially dating to the 1200s, but also dating to the 1500s and to the second half of the 1700s, when the church was internally restored in the Late Baroque style. Nevertheless the internal structure is made up of cross vaults dating to the 10th and the 11th centuries, which still preserve frescoes showing zoomorphic figures. The façade houses two groups of Gothic sculptures (Our Lady with the Baby, and Angels with Offerer), whose original sculptures are preserved in the San Matteo Museum (link). The small loggias in the upper part, with small columns, capitals and small trilobate arches, are dated to the early 1300s. The richness of the architectural and sculpture decoration both inside and outside, and the many valuable paintings still existing, confirm the importance and the central position of the church of San Michele in the Quartiere di Mezzo (next to the Quartiere di Foriporta, later called San Francesco district),  a district full of commercial activity and arts and crafts workshops, residences and work place for several of the most important families of the mercantile aristocracy in Pisa.

Worthy of mention, on the façade are to be found propagandist inscriptions extolling students who were on the list for the election for the University Chancellor at the beginning of the 1600s. This is a meaningful symbol of the progressive changes which Pisa underwent in the Modern period, from an international mercantile centre to the seat of the most prestigious university in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.