Saint Frediano

Capannori, località Lunata, Via della Chiesa Lunata, 4, 55012 Lucca LU

The church of San Frediano is attested by documents from the 8^th century and mentioned as a parish church for the first time in a document of 812, but the building was then completely rebuilt for the first time in the 12^th century and then remodeled at the end of the 18^th century, when it intervened mainly in the presbytery area and in the transept. The latter, however, was probably absent from the medieval building but was present at the end of the 16^th century: archaeological analyzes of the masonry led to the discovery of a squared and smooth white limestone ashlar compatible with a dating to the XII century, but only limited to the nave. The monumental bell tower is also medieval, built in the 13^th century next to the stone and brick church. Inside the church there are important works, among which there is a panel with the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine and the Father Etreno in a glory of Angels in the lunette of the Sienese Francesco Vanni, painted in the early 17^th century, and an altarpiece with Saint John the Baptist among the saints Girolamo and Jacopo of the Faentine Alessandro Ardenti, painted in 1566 and placed in the northern arm of the transept. The marble baptismal font is a typical polygonal source from the Renaissance period, which can be placed in the second half of the 15^th century, while in the civital context it is the tabernacle for the holy oils. In the church there is also a wooden sculpture of the enthroned Madonna of the second half of the 13^th century, also attributed to Francesco di Valdambrino. The fresco decoration of the apse and the dome are the work of Michele Marcucci, who executed them at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, in the same years that is when he went performing vault and apse of the parish church of Capannori. The mechanical organ of the church, rebuilt by Evaristo Santarlasci in 1892, has a painted sound box bearing the date 1785.