Entering inside the city walls of Lucca through the Porta San Pietro as we did the other day, one cannot help noticing on the left hand side an attractive renaissance style building. It’s the ‘Oratorio della Madonnina’.

The oratory dates from the 16th century and was built to commemorate a church demolished to make way for part of the new city walls.

As the story goes:

“When in 1513 the basilica of San Pier (Pietro) Maggiore was destroyed to make way for the new city walls, only a column with an effigy of the Madonna depicted on it remained standing from the old church. When a worker attempted to demolish the column, a large flame hit him, stunning him. The situation was reported to Bishop Sisto Gara Franciotti della Rovere who decided to leave the column untouched by building around it what is now the oratory of the Madonna.”

On the oratory’s exterior there are three bas-reliefs illustrating the stories of the three saints most venerated in Lucca, Paolino, Martino and Pietro.

In the interior on the high altar there is a fragment of a fresco depicting the Madonna and Child between Saints Avertano and Romeo dating from the mid-fifteenth century, attributed to Borghese di Pietro and originally in the old church of San Pietro. The tombstone depicting the two pilgrim saints is from the end of the fifteenth century and is attributed to the great Luccan sculptor Matteo Civitali.

The oratory is now the headquarters of Lucca cathedral’s famed Santa Cecilia choir and is used for rehearsals and as a repository for church music. I remember entering it some years ago when we needed to pick up some music for the choir I was then part of.

Only now have I come across the story behind the building of this charming oratory. I wonder if in a later century when, by command of Napoleon’s sister Elisa Baiocchi princess of Lucca, another church was demolished to make way for the Piazza Grande a replacement chapel was built.