Pieve di Sant'Appiano
Facts and practical information
The parish church of Sant'Appiano is located in the town of the same name in the municipality of Barberino Val d'Elsa, in the province of Florence, diocese of the same city.
It is dedicated to the saint to whom the evangelization of Valdelsa is traditionally attributed.
It is the only building in the Florentine countryside that preserves remnants of a baptistery independent of the church, a solution that in the area south of the Arno was found only in the parish churches of Sant' Alessandro a Giogoli, San Piero in Bossolo, the Pieve di Coeli Aula, and the Pieve di Empoli. Today only four pillars remain of the baptistery, reminders of the central plan of the building demolished in 1805 following an earthquake.
The parish church preserves traces of two construction phases: the arches dividing the nave on the left belong to the 10th-11th centuries, as does the apse decorated with fornixes and the elevation of the nave punctuated by Lombard arches; the arches on the right were rebuilt in terracotta after the collapse of the bell tower in 1171: the forms are more slender, the capitals are carved with stylized leaves and human faces rendered realistically.
Tuscany