Concattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Paolo - Sovana (GR), Italia - Romanesque Architecture on Waymarking.com

Tradition says that the bishop of Palermo, Mamiliano, carried out evangelization work in Sovana at the beginning of the 4th century. This early conversion to Christianity earned Sovana the nomination, received in the 5th century, as a bishopric.

The foundation of the current building dates back to the 8th-9th century, and from then until the 17th century it was the subject of repeated structural interventions or decorative modernizations. The existence of a large and important ecclesia cathedralis is evidenced not only by the bull of Niccolò II of 1061, but also by the large vaulted crypt in tufa stone, which still exists, and by the internal marble pilasters of the current portal, carved from symbolic geometric decorations so close in style and time to those, all alluding to the Eucharist, of the monumental marble ciborium, a real unicum in all of Tuscany, transported from remote times to the church of Santa Maria, but contemporary to the construction of the first Cathedral for which it was built.

Comparisons with the Ravenna prototype of Sant'Apollinare lead to see similarities in the Sovanese aedicule due to workers united by an identical Lombard formation. There is the hypothesis that the ciborium is one of the first monumental documents of the now rooted presence of the new lords of Sovana, the Aldobrandeschi.

After the grandiose reconstruction, which was still being worked on in 1248, the architectural modules correspond well to the extensions that were promoted in numerous cathedrals in southern Tuscany in the 12th century. On the prototype, then more modern, offered by the abbey of Sant'Antimo with its Lombard construction and decorative forms - which are fully manifested here in the biblical stories carved in the capitals - those cathedrals now express a Romanesque style of the second generation, ready to welcome structural and formal novelties with a Gothic flavor.

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Romanesque or Pre-Romanesque: Preromanesque Web site proof of Romanesque or Pre-Romanesque features: [Web Link] Date of origin: 9th century Type of building (structure): Church Architect(s) if known: Not listed Address: Not listed

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