Chiesa Vecchia di Gorfigliano, or the Old Church of Gorfigliano, stands beside the Museo dell’Identità dell’Alta Garfagnana in the municipality of Minucciano, Lucca province, Tuscany. The museum system places the complex on a hill known locally as Casa, amid the Apuan Alps. Rather than treating the church as an isolated monument, visitors can read it together with the neighboring museum and the old settlement landscape. The Italian-language sources describe a place where religious memory, village history and the work of local volunteers are closely connected.
The church is dedicated to the Madonna del Patrocinio. The museum’s account says that after the 1920 earthquake the building was abandoned for many years. Restoration and rebuilding work began in 1983, and continued for more than twenty years. Local volunteers carried out the effort; the museum describes them as the “heroes” of the Old Church. This is a documented community-led recovery, not a claim that the church was rebuilt in one short campaign or that every part of the older structure survived unchanged.
