THE CHURCHES

Built in ashlars of squared calcarenite (a stone commonly known as ‘Verrucano’), trimmed by chisel and flattened with a single-point tool, the church of Mirteto presents a single-nave, apsed ichnography.
The isodomic building technique of horizontal, parallel courses can also be found in religious and monastic facilities rising in the surroundings, confirming the presence of travelling workers who spread their know-how on the territory in a capillary way.
The edifice was built onto a slightly sloping ground, following the transverse direction of the nave. The apse is canonically east-facing.
Two interesting details characterize the building.
In the first place, the side facing north, towards the mountain (i.e. the coldest one) lacks one-light windows, which are found, in contrast, on the southern side, looking onto the monastic facilities.
Secondly, the occurrence of three splayed openings onto the apse allowed those who were inside the church to have a wide view over the road going down from the mountain – a sort of defensive measure, justified by the proximity of the territory to the borders of Lucca region.
Today, the church appears unroofed and deprived of any liturgical fittings. 
The inner masonry is marked by characteristic niches employed as lamp holders, used by the monks to lighten the church in the nightly hours of prayer.
The monastery next to the church is now in a state of ruin. It consisted of a two-storeys edifice, accessible from the Asciano valley through a stone portal, surmounted by a depressed round arch. On the ground floor, wine cellars are still partially visible, as well as the warehouses and an oil mill; on the upper floor was a dormitory and other rooms for common use.

The foundation of this monastery has left but undocumented news; monastic facilities were first confirmed in 1150, when they passed from the Camaldolese to the Cistercian Order.
The monastery complex had been working as such until 1472, when it was first annexed to the monasteries of San Remedio di Pisa and San Michele alla Verruca. It was later rented out to private stakeholders, as a production facility aimed at the exploitation of local resources. This change of use included the construction and addition of a drying room for chestnuts and a few rural edifices, built between the 18th and the 19th centuries. 
The monastery properties also comprised a mill, located downstream.

Being the church unroofed, its interior is deprived of any liturgical fittings or works of art. 
Yet, a few sculptural elements are still visible outside the building, made by workers travelling in the area. 
The entrance doorposts are marked by corbels, one decorated with spiral motifs and the other one with a hardly outlined human head. These motifs are also found in the nearby church of S.Bernardo a Calci, today making part of a farmstay facility.
A human protome was also sculpted on a quoin of the outer wall face. 
On the southern side, which probably used to support wooden pergolas, more corbels are decorated with human and animal shapes: a whole figure, a human head and a ram. On the same wall, a sundial had been incised to mark the hours of the day.

The church appeared in a state of ruin ever since the 17th century; actually, only a few restoration works were made on the complex. The most important one was that of 1929, by the Soprintendenza of Pisa, upon a project by the architect Oreste Zocchi. On that occasion, the old stones were restored and reused on the external southern and eastern sides; the roof was renovated, the apse repaired and covered with schist slates, while the ground in front of the church façade was lowered. Following such intervention, only minimum conservation works were carried out. Today, the church is unroofed and completely emptied inside.
The monastic complex is in an advanced degradation state, too.

San Giuliano terme. La storia, il territorio, Pisa, Giardini, 1990.
L. Benassi, R. Castiglia, Mirteto. Storia e trasformazioni di un complesso monastico nel monte Pisano, Pisa, Plus, 2005.