Mentioned since 892, it is the result of at least three different building phases: an older one (northern flank), one from the 11th century (lower part of the bell tower) and another dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries, documented on the facade by the limestone. Already dedicated to Saint Ambrose, then to Saint John the Baptist, it was finally dedicated to Saint Pantaleone. The toponym “elici” instead derives from ilex, the Roman name of the holm oak that grows abundantly on the hill.
The external facing dates back to the 10th-11th century (in the more roughly rough-hewn part on the north side, with drafts on horizontal planes regularized with mortar planes of different thicknesses) and to the 12th-13th century, in the part in accurate opus quadratum
The plant has a basilica plan with three naves, divided by round arches set on limestone pillars and concluded by a single apse, according to the typical scheme of many churches in Lucca; San Pantaleone also shares the studied proportion with them.
The bell tower was obtained from a pre-existing defensive structure. Inside it formerly housed two medieval bells, requisitioned during the Second World War. The current concert of 4 bells (which replaces the two old medieval bronzes) was made by the Lorenzo Lera foundry in Borgo Giannotti (LU).
Among the internal works, the sixteenth-century marble triptych by the Riccomanni (Madonna and Child with Saints Pantaleone and John the Baptist, 1470), to which the stoup and marble ciborium also belong, and the fourteenth-century fresco depicting the Madonna and Child.
On the site of the rectory there must have been the castle documented in the 10th century as that of Plebeilice, to which the retaining wall of the churchyard probably belonged (demolished with the latest renovation works) and a circular structure incorporated in the rectory, perhaps the base of a tower. In the small square between the parish church and the rectory there is a volcanic stone basin perhaps from the Roman era, probably originally linked to a productive activity.
