Sant'Alessandro, Lucca

Sant'Alessandro Maggiore is a Romanesque church in Lucca. Your obtained in rare unity early medieval figure she owes careful restoration in between 1838 and 1840. The importance of the construction is due to the fact that he is the most faithful example of early Romanesque Lucca. The classic shape of the building is due to the role model of ancient Roman architecture for the architecture of the Middle Ages. Like other medieval buildings in Tuscany, such as Florence by Inkrustationstil, has the church St. Alexander Maggiore on a number of devices that pick up late antique models. At the same time numerous Roman spolia were used. Inside corresponds to the construction of three naves, cross houseless basilica with a semicircular apse the basic type of early Christian churches.

History

Although has been widely researched about the question of the origins of the building is largely unknown. Construction of the first 893 mentioned church can only be inferred from its architectural features. This place due to its stylistic relationship to the Basilica of San Frediano a close formation around 1060, when the Bishop of Lucca Anselmo da Baggio (later Pope Alexander II ) the relics of Pope Alexander I. of Rome in the crypt of the Church of St. Alexander Maggiore let transform.

Architecture

The present building shows two different phases:

1 ) ( 9th or 11th century) The lower façade with a portal of traditional character and the white surface, which is crossed by stripes in soft gray, similar to the Roman opus quadratum pseudoisodomum; the western part of the colonnades with columns of different colored marbles and with ancient and medieval Corinthian capitals, the philological, the decorative motifs of the 1 -2. Century repeat (but often after late antique para tactical arrangement ). As in early Christian basilicas of Rome columns and capitals are symmetrically arranged to show at a liturgical way.

2) (11th and / or 12th century ) The eastern part of the building with monochromatic colonnades, Romanesque capitals and simpler masonry.; the whole clerestory and the upper part of the facade as well as the decoration of the apse statements with hanging sheet of Lombard type.

From a later era, the vault (16th century) and the shrine, which was the side entrance in the 15th century added come.

As a link between the ancient world and its "rebirth" in the 15th century provides Sant'Alessandro Maggiore thus an important representative of the Tuscan architecture of the Middle Ages dar.