If aspirin doesn’t work, the Arca di San Pietro Martire (ark of St. Peter the martyr) may just do the trick.
The gothic white marble sculpture created by Giovanni di Balduccio is a funerary monument and sarcophagus containing the remains of San Pietro Martire, a Dominican inquisitor. Legend tells that the artist miscalculated the dimensions of the ark, which turned out to be too short to contain the body of the saint. An archbishop thus decided to separate the head from the body and preserve it in an urn that he took home. The man instantly suffered strong migraine headaches, and they only stopped when he decided to re-unite the body and the urn in the basilica of Sant'Eustorgio.
Still today, those who suffer from bad headaches gently tap their heads against the marble ark in Sant'Eustorgio and hope to be exempt from the pain for an entire year.
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