San Francesco, Gothic church in Pisa, Italy

San Francesco is a church on piazza San Francesco, the second largest in Pisa after the cathedral. It has a Latin-cross plan and a marble facade of San Giuliano stone, its lower register 14th-century and its upper half finished in 1603. The single nave, 18 m wide and widening to 22 m at the transept, is covered by exposed wooden trusses; the slender bell tower rests on two sides on corbels inside the building.

San Francesco is documented from 1233; in 1261 Archbishop Federico Visconti ordered its enlargement, with works directed from 1265-70 by Giovanni di Simone, who built the single-hall nave and the bell tower resting on corbels. The marble facade was completed only in 1603 under the Medici. Deconsecrated in 1863 and used as a barracks and state warehouse, it was declared a national monument in 1893 and reopened for worship in 1901.

The church was once home to Giotto's Stigmata of St. Francis and Cimabue's Maestà, taken by the French in the 1810s and now in the Louvre; a copy of Giunta Pisano's San Francesco e i sei miracoli hangs in the first chapel left of the altar, the original being at the Museo nazionale di San Matteo. The church is now a parish seat together with nearby Santa Cecilia, serving an Italo-Romanian community.

The church is currently closed: the roof is badly damaged, the interior is unusable and restoration work is under way. The adjoining cloister, convent and school are also in poor condition. Fundraising campaigns for the restoration have been promoted by a dedicated committee, the FAI and parish institutions.

The tomb of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, whom Dante placed in the ice of Cocytus in the Inferno, is in this church. His remains were moved here from the Torre della Fame, and because he died as a traitor he was first buried in the cloister, not in the family tomb carved by Lupo di Francesco.