Chiesa di Santo Stefano Protomartire

Situated in the locality Marsia. Rises above a promontory side apse that looms above the road 78 is the only component of external buoyancy showing still retains its original shape. The wall, all built in ashlars of sandstone, has been detected by a semi-circular apse plan. To tighten the apse are observed the two symmetrical pairs of mullioned windows that illuminate the room and the crypt below. The very location of the building on the slope of the ground allow in appropriate ways the two restructuring plans of the priesthood. The apse is presented by a decorated eaves of hanging arches, elegantly divided into three sequences of two pilasters supporting the end of the arches themselves outlining three large walls returned on the edge of the wall. The pilasters do not reach the ground, but they stop in correspondence of a wing basement along which develops the crypt. Two windows open on the center line of the apse illuminate the room and the crypt itself. Of particular interest is the window that opens mo ‘slot on the presbytery, widely splayed and with rectangular frame, suggesting the typical medieval homology between the sacred building and the bastion of defense. The old hall was connected to the crypt by two side staircases still viable. Next to the left scale is observed a valuable fragment of a fresco of the century. XIV. On either side of a lost Madonna by solemn mantle we will highlight the two lively and graceful figures of clients, a woman and a man: they are two spouses, the kneeling woman, the man standing, both hands clasped, his face stretched to the Virgin. The fineness of the miniature features and effective characterization of the clothes and hairstyles, reveal a delicate hand and wise. The high elevation of the crypt, which is located just to the pavement below the ground level, gave the sanctuary a strong visual effect, with the high wall of the inputs interrupted in the middle of the staircase leading to the altar. The lifting of the floor of the classroom has significantly softened this effect. The crypt is a place of great charm, completely free from alterations. Its discovery dates back to 1934.A reflect the tripartite division of the front of the apse, the area corresponding to the nearby presbytery is divided into three naves by six free-standing columns supporting twelve vaults. The columns are more properly pillars with a circular base, being composed of rows of sandstone. The capitals are constituted by rectangular blocks of limestone flared on the corners. It is a form that transposes in ways extremely rough a decorative practice seen in the capitals of the Romanesque crypt, where four acanthus leaves are outlined smoothing corners of the fallen. In one case, there is a column base which presents, in symmetry, the same shape of the capital; in the same example you notice that attack the stem rabbets four minor triangular match flares of underlying base. The vaults, divided by the supporting arches, forming spans of square shape. The walls of the area are finely punctuated by semi pillars that support the arches support of the time, doing also from tax on the special side wings, to the arches that frame in relief the spans of the walls themselves. In some cases the seeds pillars are crowned with fine shelves. The ‘constructive accuracy joins ingenuity thanks to the play of protrusions and recesses joined the rhythm of the many rings that incardinano and divide the world. Caps apse of the church and the crypt are framed on the source by a bow-double ring. It ‘worth noting that at the base of the apse of the crypt shows the tax of two pilasters in the initial plans were to be divided into three sectors for the basic equipment of the cap, by way’ of the external structure. The correspondences between the covers of the apse, the eurhythmic subdivision of the outer wall of the apse itself clearly in harmony with the rhythm profuse in the crypt, the symmetry of the openings of the source apse, leave no doubt about the homogeneity of the complex.