San Paolo all'Orto, Former Romanesque church in Pisa, Italy

San Paolo all'Orto is a former Roman Catholic church in Pisa, now unconsecrated and used for cultural events. Its façade has the typical Pisan bichrome marble stripes, articulated in five arcades with lozenges, intarsias and capitals sculpted by Biduino in the late 12th century. The interior has a nave and two aisles; the apse was destroyed in the 15th century. A 17th-century bell tower stands alongside.

San Paolo all'Orto is documented from 1086, when it was called San Paolo in Burgo; by 1120 it was already known as "all'Orto". Augustinian nuns held it as a priory from the 12th to the 15th century and restructured it in 1481, shortening the nave by one bay and destroying the apse. Suppressed in 1808, it was reopened in 1819 and definitively closed for worship in 1950; since 2005 it has housed the University of Pisa's Gipsoteca di Arte Antica.

The name 'all'Orto' refers to a vegetable garden that once stood nearby, connecting this church to the everyday activities of the local community. This naming reflects how religious spaces were intertwined with the practical life of people living in medieval neighborhoods.

The former church is now the seat of the University of Pisa's Gipsoteca di Arte Antica and Antiquarium, so access follows the museum's opening rather than parish hours. It stands on Piazza San Paolo all'Orto in the San Francesco district, north of the Arno, and can be reached on foot from the city centre. Look for the south wall, where a sinopia of an archer was found.

The church's name changed with its setting: a 1086 document calls it San Paolo in Burgo, while by 1120 it was already San Paolo all'Orto, after the cultivated plots around it. Its Croce di San Paolo all'Orto is now kept at Pisa's Museo nazionale di San Matteo.