Santappiano
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They say that Saint Appiano, the legendary fisherman from Liguria who escaped Roman persecution, was buried on this isolated hill on the right bank of the Elsa, on a site known in antiquity as Mons Aureus. The parish church is first mentioned as a possession of the Bishop of Florence in a document dated 990, and a century later it is recorded as fortified. Traces of the towers can still be seen in the village. Of the original proto Romanesque church the central apse remains, enclosed between two square chapels which were obtained by transforming the two semicircular lateral apses. It is decorated with pilaster strips and pairs of small suspended arches, a motif repeated on the northern side of the church. The left of the facade, made of pebbles and stone ashlars and capped with arrow-loops, belongs to the proto-Romanesque structure, while the right side, made of brick, was rebuilt in 1171 after the collapse of the bell-tower which affected the church’s right nave. The interior has three naves. The bordered arches on the left are supported by stone pillars, those on the right, by brick columns with sculpted stone capitals with foliage, geometric motifs and human heads, in the full Romanesque style of the late 12th century. During the second half of the 14th century, the roof was rebuilt, thanks to the generosity of the parish priest Francesco Catellini da Castigiione. In 1492 his successor and nephew commissioned Filippo di Antonio Filippelli to paint the fresco of Saint Peter Martyr in the left nave of the church. The same artist also painted the fresco of Saint Matthew with Saint Anthony Abbot, which bears the date 1486 and the name of the two commissioners. On the same wall, the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian is a result of the collaboration of the artist and his teacher Bernardo Rosselli. It was paid by the Compagnia dell’Assunta, or dei Cento affiliated to the church. The chapel at the base of the bell tower was dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption at the end of the 16th century by the parish priest Francesco Muzzi, who commissioned its frescoes from an unknown late-Renaissance painter. You access the cloister from the right nave, through a doorway crowned by an architrave sculpted in bas-relief with Saint Michael Archangel and motifs of intertwined vegetation, with a Latin inscription recalling the collapse of the bell-tower. The small 13th century cloister has a portico supported by columns. Under the portico is a three-mullioned window, now walled-in, and the doorway to the chapter house, with a beautiful marble and brick lunette. The restoration of the rectory, ordered by the parish priest Francesco da Castiglione, dates back to the early 16th century. In the hall, a large stone fireplace carries his family shield, his name and the date 1505. The ceiling was also rebuilt with trusses supported by wooden corbels carved with acanthus leaves. Above the doors the walls were frescoed with four figures, today barely discernible, possibly representations of the Liberal Arts. The parish priest also carried out works in the cellars below, using two rooms dug into the tufa, which were originally Etruscan tombs. In front of the church are the remains of a building which collapsed in 1805, thought to be a 6th century pre-Romanesque baptistery. It was most probably a small chapel with a circular plan and dome supported by the groups of ribbed pillars, which still stand today. The characteristics of the pillars and of the capitals, sculpted with motifs linked to the theme of Redemption, date the ruins to around the 12th century.
Antiquarium
The rooms adjoining the parish church house a small museum which collects archaeological finds from the area. In the first room we find artifacts discovered at the site of San Martino ai Colli in the early 20th century. The Etruscan alabaster urns from the Hellenistic period, datable between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, are decorated with myth lids portraying the reclining figure of the deceased. The many fragments of ceramics bear witness to the area’s flourishing economy; some were produced in Volterra and have a black glaze, others with black and red glazes were imported from Attica between the 6th and 5th centuries BC, making their way from the Etruscan ports on the coast to the cities of this area. The second room exhibits the archaeological finds of the 1973 excavation at Podere Piazza, close to the church: a group of loafs shaped “cippi”, or boundary stones, and shards of black glazed Hellenistic ceramics; many later ceramic fragments, from the 14th to the 16th centuries, found in tombs which were later used for storage and later still as dumps. A stone statuette from the baptistery resenting an Erote riding a dog, which seems to date to the Middie Ages rather than to a pagan era is exhibited in a corner. The panel hanging here, once in the Council Hall of Barberino, depicts a Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Giacomo della Marca and is attributed to the Maestro di Signa, an artist who continued to paint in late Gothic style in the mid 15th Century.
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