The site of the cathedral, as in other cities of ancient origin, is located on the limits of the Roman city: the central spaces of Roman Lucca were heavily urbanized and the project, which will be implemented for the church of San Michele, to use the hole space. We have no information on the primitive construction: an example of an episcopal complex was thought of, consisting of a series of grouped churches, with differentiated functions. The baptistery, the church currently known as the Church of Santi Giovanni e Reparata and probably the church that occupied the site of today’s cathedral overlooked the area of the current Piazza San Martino. Other sacred buildings stood nearby, such as the now destroyed church of San Salvatore in Pulìa. San Martino received the title of cathedral church in the eighth century, at the expense of the church of Santa Reparata. The move probably occurred to underline the new state of affairs in Lucca, with the end of the Longobard dominion and the advent of the Carolingian counts, in close collaboration with the papacy. A sign of this change was the transfer in 780, by Bishop Giovanni I, of the relics of San Regolo from the now depopulated city of Populonia. To house the prestigious relics it was necessary to enlarge the church, with the construction of a crypt and new and more sumptuous interior furnishings. The cathedral was completely rebuilt starting from 1060 and solemnly consecrated in 1070 by Anselmo da Baggio, who at the time of the consecration was already Pope Alexander II, but had kept the title of bishop of Lucca, also because he was engaged in the clash with the antipope. Honorius II, or Cadalo da Parma. The only remnant of this phase of the cathedral, which must have been a building of great importance, is the Bust of Anselmo da Baggio, preserved today in the Cathedral Museum. The church, in Romanesque style, must have had a basilical body with five naves, supported by columns surmounted by women’s galleries, wooden roofs. The portico, built later, still retains a series of corbels on which a planking was to be laid out to form a passage that connected to the women’s galleries. In 1196 the Opera del Frontespizio was established, which provided itself with its own consuls and revenues in order to build and adorn the facade with a new portico, an element already present in the cathedral since 833, destroyed in 905 and rebuilt in 928. A in turn, the Pisan cathedral must have heavily influenced the reconstruction of the façade portico, by Guidetto da Como, a sculptor and architect already involved in the Pisan construction site, who on the façade of San Martino is depicted holding a parchment bearing the date 1204. The construction site led to the birth of the so-called Second style of the Romanesque of Lucca, strongly influenced by the more innovative Pisan Romanesque, but which further accentuates the complexity and intricacy of the columned decoration. View of the left side of the apsidal sector, where traces of the 1320 redaction remain; note the pointed arches, and the slender rectangular pillar (the one with frescoes), with simple molding without capital. As soon as the construction of the façade portico was completed, it was necessary, perhaps due to a static instability, to renovate the apse area. Bishop Henry II granted part of the land of the gardens of the bishop’s palace (still today located east of the cathedral) to augmentandam ecclesiam [4] for an extension of the apse by fourteen arms. The length of this extension suggests that a remodeling of the three-nave cathedral with a transept was already being planned; in fact, the extension brought the church stands to the same length that was subsequently given to the arms of the transept. The works, as evidenced by a plaque in the apse, began in 1308; they were resumed in 1320 by the Operaio ser Bonaventura Rolenzi (who placed the plaque where the buildings under his predecessor had reached). In 1348 as evidenced by a testamentary donation by the widow of Castruccio Castracani in trefunibus (sic per tribunis) novis inceptis et fineendis, which perhaps for reasons of savings, perhaps for the urgency of the work, perhaps for the conservative spirit typical of Lucca’s artistic expressions , were carried out largely by reusing worked stones and marble inlays from the ancient church, thus creating a large single apse with a deceptive Romanesque appearance in the middle of the fourteenth century. The poor economic conditions of the city of Lucca in those years of its history considerably reduced the funds available and the stands were built in a rather poor and modest Gothic style, with pointed arches and rectangular-section pillars crowned with a simple frame, worked with little dexterity. and which denote a “great negligence of execution”
