Barga

BARGA. - In the province of Lucca, made famous by Pascoli, who is buried there. The principal monument is the Cathedral, Romanesque, built in several phases between the 12th and 14th centuries (a door on the west side bears the date 1371), and subsequently restored and completed in the 17th century; the facade, unusually straight, is the transformation of the side of a single-nave church (perhaps of the 11th century); it is soberly decorated with small hanging arches supported by pilasters, of the kind that later spread through Versilia and Garfagnana; it has doors in the Pisan taste embellished with Lombard-style sculptures. The interior, with three naves, preserves the highly valuable pulpit, a work attributed, like the choir screens, to a follower of Guido Begarelli da Como (mid-13th century).

Other notable works: a relief attributable to Biduino (late 13th century), a gigantic wooden statue of St. Christopher, of the 13th century, a ciborium and a Holy Family of the Robbia school, and numerous goldsmith works kept in the sacristy.

Other Robbia terracottas are found in the churches of St. Francis and of the Conservatorio, the latter also notable for a painted stained-glass window of the 16th century.

Fabia Borroni