The church of San Giuseppe is the parish church of Torre del Lago Puccini, a hamlet of Viareggio, at the corner of viale Puccini and the via Aurelia. It is one of the most beautiful and oldest in the area, frescoed on the façade and inside by the Torre del Lago painter Ferruccio Orlandi (1897-1975).
What to see
In this area, once part of the parish of Quiesa, there was only an oratory of San Giuseppe, near the lake. The population was growing fast and a new church was needed, at the crossroads between the via Regia from Viareggio to Pisa and the road from the lake to the sea: work began on 4 July 1774 and in 1776, at the expense of the Carthusian fathers of Farneta, the church was built, small and with a single nave, belonging to the diocese of Pisa until 1789. In 1878 it was enlarged with two small side aisles. On the death of Giacomo Puccini, in 1924, the funeral was also held at Torre del Lago, at the end of November 1926, in this church, with a long procession to the villa where he was buried. On 8 September 1944 the retreating German troops mined the bell tower, destroying also the rear part of the church and the altar; rebuilding was completed in 1951 and in 1955 the new bell tower received a clock donated by the Comune of Viareggio.
The church, from the late eighteenth century, has a stepped façade in Neo-Renaissance style and the classic Latin-cross form, with three naves and a transept. The central part of the façade ends in a frescoed triangular pediment, supported by paired pilasters, with the main door in the middle. The interior has three naves of five bays: a barrel vault in the central one, cross vaults in the aisles, and above the transept a dome painted on the inside; tall windows with coloured glass let the light filter in. Naves, transept and the area above the altar are decorated with large, luminous frescoes by Ferruccio Orlandi, of the mid nineteen-fifties, restored by his son Lanfranco in the nineteen-nineties.
Visiting
The church is at Torre del Lago Puccini, at the corner of viale Puccini and the via Aurelia. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The organ was donated by Antonio Puccini in 1929; damaged in the collapse of the bell tower, it has been put back in order and is still in use today.
