The first documentary evidence of the church dates back to the second half of the 9th century; the dedication to St. Michael the Archangel is moreover a significant indication of the presence of the Lombards, particularly devoted to the holy warrior.
In 1270 it was destroyed, probably during one of the numerous wars between Lucca and Pisa, and rebuilt in 1301. In 1848 it was rebuilt and enlarged following a fire.
On the external wall next to the bell tower you can still see the Romanesque masonry, with two single lancet windows, dominated by the nineteenth-century reconstruction with large arched windows. The stone bell tower with a square base is also in Romanesque style, placed on a stepped base and decorated with two orders of marble mullioned windows.
The interior is typically 19th century, with a measured decoration that recalls the previous rococo solutions. On the counter-façade choir loft is the valuable pipe organ, built between 1602 and 1606 by the Venetian Vincenzo Colonna and subsequently remodeled several times.
The church preserves a late fifteenth-century panel with the Annunciation, formerly in the nearby oratory of the same name, and the seventeenth-century painted doors of the organ. The baptismal font is from 1590.
The Eucharistic tabernacle, attributable to Riccomanni, is atypical, which combines still archaic features, such as the pointed arch of the crowning, with more updated motifs, such as the curlicue decoration including rosettes of the same crowning and the garlands that flank the chalice on the frontispiece. The representation of St. Michael the Archangel in the cymatium is completely exceptional: it is a derogation from the canonical norms which only allowed the presence of the figures of God the Father, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, or of the Cross and of the Eucharistic symbols.
