Church of Santa Caterina - Pisa

In 1220 the Dominican Uguccione Sardo officially founded a hospital within the city walls of Pisa with an attached church. However, both the hospital and the church were already mentioned in a document from 1211.

After the abolition of the religious orders by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo (1748), the monastery was closed and the church became a parish church.

From 1923 until after the Second World War, the church underwent a series of restorations (including the restoration of the bell tower) aimed at restoring the church to a style close to the original Gothic style, while also repairing the damage caused during the Second World War. World War I had been inflicted.

To the left of the church, near the apse, is the bell tower.

To the left of the church is the building of the Dominican Monastery. The building is built around a central courtyard, which follows the space originally occupied by the cloister, and has a building to the left of the frontage of the church, the rectory. Behind the latter a large garden develops.

The interior of the church is in the shape of a Latin cross, with a single nave covered with exposed wooden trusses.

Along the nave are four 17th-century side altars in pietra serena, with a painted wooden processional statue representing the Madonna and Child (first altar on the right), and Saint Catherine of Siena receiving the stigmata (first altar on the left), a work from the 17th century by Raphael Vanni, The Preaching of St. Vincent Ferreri (second altar on the left), painted by Pietro Dandini in the 17th century, and St. Raymond Raimond Raising a Dead (second altar on the right), a painting from the 17th century century of Cesare Varchesi.

Also in the nave is the Funerary Monument of Archbishop Simone Saltarelli (1343-1347), by Andrea Pisano with the collaboration of his son Nino Pisano, on the left wall, and the Funerary Monument of Gherardo di Bartolomeo by Simone Compagno (ca. 1419), by an unknown author, on the right wall. Further on, to the left and right, respectively, are the Glory of St. Thomas recently attributed to Lippo Memmi, after long being attributed to Francesco Traini (c. 1340) and the Martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria by Aurelio Lomi ( 1653).

Before the transept, on the right wall of the nave, is a side chapel with two bays.

On the back wall there are five chapels. In the first chapel on the right is the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. In the second is a marble dossal by Matteo Civitali with the Madonna between Saints Jerome and Dominic (15th century). The main chapel forms the apse of the church and houses the main altar, consisting of a mensa supported by small columns, below which is the tomb of Blessed Fra' Giordano di Rivalto (14th century). In the end wall of the apse is a large four-light window depicting saints. In the first chapel on the left is a 14th century crucifix; the contemporaneous Sarcophagus of Falcone da Calcinaia is in the second chapel on the left and is topped by the Saint Dominic altarpiece, a copy of an original by Francesco Traini, which is exhibited in the National Saint Matthew Museum.

At the foot of the pillars of the triumphal arch we find the statue group of the Annunciation (1368) by Nino Pisano, consisting of the statues of the Madonna and the Archangel Gabriel, to the left and right of the arch respectively.

Willem Vandenameele