La facciata della cattedrale di Santa Maria e San Genesio a San Miniato

The Cathedral of Saint Mary and St. Genesius in San Miniato (PI) stands today as the result of multiple interventions followed up between the 14th and the 19ty centuries, which transformed the Medieval apparatus, by altering permanently the internal asset of the church. The external part, on the contrary, was partially preserved, with the Romanesque structures dating back to the late 12th-early 13th centuries. The aim of this paper is to investigate the most representative part of the building, the façade, entirely made up of scratch-decorated bricks, which represent a meeting point between the architectural features of the Romanesque culture known as ‘valdelsana’. The stratigraphic analysis on the walls has led to deepen the knowledge relevant to the original structure and to contextualise its more important element, i.e. the 31 ceramic basins, inserted in the walls. They reveal a scheme which only apparently is independent from the architectural structures.