Saint Leonard or Old church

San Leonardo, Aquilea Lucca

The Castellaccio locality near Aquilea takes its name from the presence in the area of ​​an important castle, fief of the bishops of Lucca. In this area there was a single-nave church with an apse which is today reduced to a romantic ruin by the passage of the front in 1944. Remembered in the year of 1260 as pertaining to the parish church of Sesto di Moriano, the building of which it is still possible today admiring the remains is probably from the 12^th century, but a church must have existed in the area for many previous centuries: it would also indicate, among other things, the discovery in 1945 of a slab with a cross placed chronologically between the end of the sixth and the 6^th century. beginning of the 7^th century. This slab has since been reused as an altar table: for this purpose a square cut was also made on one of the sides for the insertion of the consecrated stone, then cemented with a marble plug containing relics that was removed on the occasion of a recent cleaning for exhibition purposes (the work was in fact included in the Lucca and Europe exhibition. An idea of ​​the Middle Ages. V-XI century held in Lucca in 2010). The artifact is of extraordinary value and importance: polished also in its rear part, so as to suggest its use in an upright position (a bishop's chair?) Or, alternatively, the use for its realization of an ancient slab, for the manner in which the relief is conducted, of great elegance and with clear references to the coeval goldsmith (for example see the chains hanging from the arms of the cross), is to refer to a primitive phase of the Lombard settlement in this area . The wooden sculpture depicting St. Leonard attributed to the sculptor Francesco di Valdambrino, active between the end of the 14^th and the beginning of the 15^th, and now kept in the new parish church, probably also came from the ancient church. In 1944 the old church of Aquilea was the scene of a fierce battle between Germans and allied forces: the former had in fact set up its own military post, with machine gun nests that controlled the entire area below from the height. On September 23^rd the partisans and the Americans of the Buffalo division decided to proceed with the conquest of the church, with an operation that was successful but which unfortunately also involved new and further damage to the Romanesque church.