Cool gray light filters through delicate Gothic tracery windows in this rare real-photo-style black-and-white postcard of the interior of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa — one of the most exquisite small Gothic churches in all of Italy, built to house a thorn (spina) said to come from Christ's Crown of Thorns and relocated stone by stone to higher ground in 1871 to save it from the flooding Arno. Carved wooden pews lead the eye toward a modest altar flanked by Renaissance statues, the entire space enclosed by the building's signature striped marble walls of alternating dark and pale stone. Few postcards were ever made of this church's intimate interior, making this photograph — taken in the early Fascist era under Mussolini — a genuinely scarce document of a space little-changed since the Middle Ages. The date "'33" penciled in the stamp box on the reverse and the "Riproduzione interdetta" (reproduction forbidden) copyright notice underline how jealously this image was guarded by its photographer.