Discover Propositura di San Niccolò, Radda in Chianti

The propositura di San Niccolò is the principal Catholic place of worship of Radda in Chianti. It stands facing the Palazzo del Podestà, in a raised position, and is reached by a flight of steps up from via Roma.

Its documentary history begins in 1260, when it is cited in the Libro di Montaperti alongside the churches of San Cassiano and Santa Cristina di Radda, all administered by a single rector. In the tithe lists of 1276 and 1303 it appears as a suffragan of the pieve di San Giusto in Salcio.

It rose through the ranks slowly. It was raised to a priory in 1660 and to the title of Propositura in 1899.

The building was badly damaged in the Second World War, like the historic centre around it. The intervention of greatest impact, though, came earlier: in 1926 the facade was remade by Adolfo Coppedè — and the church had never had one before.

The oldest fabric is where the modern work did not reach. Traces of the original Romanesque church are visible at the back of the building and in the base of the bell tower.

The facade is a 1926 composition. A great round arch is set on the front, surmounted by a gabled roof supported on two large lion-head corbels, with a rose window inside the arch and, below it, a sandstone portal under a lunette holding a terracotta Madonna and Child between two white-glazed terracotta angels. The lower masonry is sandstone blocks.

The style label is contested in the sources, and not resolved here. The church's own record calls the 1926 work neo-Romanesque in its history and then describes the result as in neo-Gothic style; Visit Tuscany calls it neo-Gothic. A round arch is Romanesque vocabulary; the fresco inside it is described as neo-Gothic. This page gives the elements and the disagreement.

Inside, the plan is a Latin cross with one nave. Wooden trusses over the nave, a quadrangular apse, and the transept in the apse zone.

Pietra serena carries the fittings. The two holy-water stoups, the seventeenth-century baptismal font in its 1616 niche, and the altars in both transepts are all of it.

The bell tower is structurally parasitic, and interestingly so. The present tower, of the 1950s, was built leaning against one of the towers of the ancient castle of Radda — a twentieth-century campanile propped on a medieval fortification, consolidated in 1997.

This is a building known mostly through paperwork. The war damage was severe enough that, as the record says plainly, without the pastoral-visit reports and the ecclesiastical inventories it would be very difficult to reconstruct what the church looked like between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Most of what can be said about its earlier fabric is said from documents.

What can still be read in stone is Romanesque, at the rear and in the base of the campanile.

The 1926 campaign was an addition, not a restoration. There was no facade to restore: the church had always remained without one. Adolfo Coppedè therefore designed a front from scratch, in the manner of late historicist eclecticism as it was applied in Tuscany's minor centres, and the result is described as a typical example of exactly that.

It was an urban project as much as an architectural one. The same intervention remade the square below and built the public fountain with its lion's-mouth spout — so the church, the steps, the piazza and the fountain are one design of one moment.

Terracotta does the ornament. The lunette over the sandstone portal holds a terracotta Madonna and Child flanked by angels in white-glazed terracotta — a cheap and traditional Tuscan medium used, in 1926, to quote the fifteenth century.

The twentieth century kept working on it. A new presbytery and a restored apse in 1969; the bell tower built in the 1950s against a castle tower and consolidated, with an hour-striking mechanism, in 1997.

Why did the church have no facade until 1926?

Because it never had one — the record says the building had always remained without a facade. The one it has was built between 1926 and 1930.

Who designed it?

Adolfo Coppedè. The faded frescoes inside the great arch are attributed to his brother Carlo. Some accounts credit the facade to Carlo; the church's own record credits Adolfo.

Is the facade neo-Romanesque or neo-Gothic?

Both labels are used, by the same article in different places and by the regional tourist board. What is actually there is a round arch under a gable on lion-head corbels, with a rose window and a terracotta lunette. This page reports the disagreement rather than settling it.

Where does the fountain come from?

The same 1926 campaign. The square below the church was remade and given the public fountain whose water issues from a lion's mouth.

What is the best thing inside?

The Madonna del Rosario with the Child and Saints in the left transept — formerly given to Alessandro Allori, now attributed to Francesco Boldrini, datable to about 1633.

Is anything medieval left?

Yes, but not much and not in front: traces of the original Romanesque church survive at the rear of the building and in the base of the bell tower.

Why is the bell tower attached to a castle tower?

Because it was built that way. The present campanile dates from the 1950s and was raised leaning against one of the towers of the ancient castle of Radda.

When is it open?

Nobody publishes hours. It is a working parish church; the facade, the steps and the fountain are available at any time.