Chiesa di San Cristoforo

This guide to Chiesa di San Cristoforo in Lucca opens with a mismatch: a striped white and dark marble facade that promises gilded altars, but a bare stone interior lined with carved names instead. It traces the church's medieval origins, documented as early as ten fifty-three and linked to the architect Diotisalvi, through centuries of vaults, stucco, and Baroque altars added inside it. You'll hear what happened here in nineteen thirty-nine and nineteen forty, when officials stripped centuries of decoration back to raw stone. Stand among the columns and look for what was carved into them in place of saints and frescoes.