Santa Maria Forisportam, Lucca, Romanesque church in Lucca, Italy

Santa Maria Forisportam is a Romanesque church on piazza Santa Maria Bianca in Lucca. Its facade has a lower order of blind arcades on white limestone and an upper section of red brick with a rose window and a carved animal on the left corner. Inside, three naves of grey ashlar rest on square piers, with a pale pointed barrel vault crossed by ribs and a floor of red and white stone squares.

An 8th-century hospice with a church dedicated to Santa Maria stood outside Lucca's Roman eastern gate, giving the name foris portam. The present church was built between the late 11th and early 12th century, when it was enclosed within the medieval walls, and was completed by the end of that century. Its facade followed a few decades later, by the mid-13th century.

The name Forisportam means "outside the gate", from the church's position beyond Lucca's Roman walls; it is also called Santa Maria Bianca after the white limestone facade. The Guercino canvases were commissioned by abbot Giovanni Alfonso Puccinelli: Saint Lucy was paid for in October 1640, and the Assumption with Saints Francis and Alexander in May 1643 for the Mazzarosa chapel.

A hole high on the eastern wall casts a beam of sunlight onto a line traced across the floor; when the beam meets the line, it is true local noon, 7 minutes 55 seconds behind Rome time. The church is entered from Piazza Santa Maria Bianca, and the sundial is best seen on a clear day.

The baptismal font is a paleo-Christian carved sarcophagus, reused for baptism. The church also keeps a 1386 Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin by Angelo Puccinelli, signed in capital letters and dated by the Lucchese painter, moved back into the right transept on 8 December 2024 after restoration.