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Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

Scopri Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

Ultimo aggiornamento il 3 novembre 2026

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Introduzione

La chiesa di Santa Maria è un edificio di culto di Panzano in Chianti, frazione di Greve in Chianti in provincia di Firenze, diocesi di Fiesole. È la parrocchiale del paese, dedicata a Santa Maria Assunta, la cui festa del 15 agosto è il giorno patronale di Panzano.

L'edificio attuale è del 1890-1903. Sostituì, alla fine del XIX secolo, l'antica chiesa di Santa Maria che sorgeva poco fuori del castello.

Sotto c'è una chiesa registrata in un elenco fiscale. L'edificio attuale derivava dall'ampliamento di un primitivo edificio romanico, ricordato negli elenchi delle Rationes Decimarum per la Tuscia degli anni 1274/75, a sua volta ingrandito probabilmente nel Tre-Quattrocento con l'utilizzo come campanile di una delle torri perimetrali dell'antico castello medievale.

Alla fine dell'Ottocento erano ancora due edifici. La chiesa era compresa fra gli attuali due grandi archi, senza cappelle laterali, e il campanile restava staccato dalla chiesa stessa. Fra le due costruzioni c'era l'ingresso al cimitero.

Architettura

La chiesa è un involucro ottocentesco attorno a parti più antiche. L'aspetto attuale è dovuto alla ristrutturazione del 1890-1903; di prima restano la linea dei due grandi archi che contenevano la vecchia navata, e la torre.

Il campanile è architettura militare riutilizzata. È una delle torri perimetrali del castello medievale, adottata come campanile probabilmente nel Tre-Quattrocento — e poi in parte racchiusa dalla nuova facciata quando la navata fu spinta in avanti: per questo torre e chiesa oggi si leggono come una massa sola e non come due edifici.

La pianta crebbe ai due capi e di fianco. Cappelle laterali dove non ce n'erano; la navata prolungata sul davanti; e sul retro due semicerchi al posto di una conclusione rinascimentale piatta, che un'abside non l'aveva.

Le giunzioni si vedono da un punto preciso. La documentazione è esplicita: gli ampliamenti sono ben riconoscibili osservando la fiancata sinistra della chiesa dal camposanto vecchio.

La chiesa rinascimentale è ricostruibile sulla carta. Una navata, nessuna abside, circa 19 per 9 metri, due grandi finestroni di pietra con inferriate e vetrate dietro l'altar maggiore e altri due in facciata, altari addossati alle pareti laterali e una cappella a volta di fianco per il fonte.

La storia in breve

Una chiesa romanica negli elenchi delle decime del 1274-75, ampliata attorno a una torre del castello e rifatta fra il 1890 e il 1903.

Leggi la guida completa su cronologia storica →

Come è stato costruito e si è trasformato nel tempo

Il campanile più economico è la torre di qualcun altro. Invece di costruirne uno, la parrocchia si prese una torre perimetrale del castello: pietra già in piedi, già alta, già della comunità. La conversione è la decisione più economica nella storia dell'edificio.

Far crescere una chiesa in avanti è più difficile di quanto sembri. Spingere la navata sul davanti significava costruire una nuova facciata che doveva incontrare la torre esistente, e la soluzione fu inglobarne una parte. Il che murò anche l'ingresso del cimitero fra le due strutture.

Il retro fu allungato in curve perché la vecchia chiesa non ne aveva. L'edificio rinascimentale finiva piatto, senza abside; i due semicerchi sono un'aggiunta della stessa campagna di fine secolo.

La pietra serena è la pietra di tutto ciò che si scolpisce. Il fonte ottagonale di circa il 1730 ne è tagliato, come di norma gli elementi lavorati delle chiese del Chianti.

La scultura è pioppo, lino e gesso. Entrambi i Crocifissi di qui sono scolpiti in pioppo, con perizomi di tela di lino ingessata e dipinta d'azzurro: combinazione leggera, economica e lavorabile, e il motivo per cui il restauro del 1998 poté recuperare sotto "la originaria policromia di finissima qualità pittorica".

E il Novecento ha lavorato il bronzo. Otto formelle fuse inserite in un portone di cipresso, 1965, di Umberto Bartoli.

Domande frequenti

Quanto è antica questa chiesa?

L'edificio è del 1890-1903. È cresciuto da una chiesa romanica ricordata negli elenchi delle decime del 1274/75, ampliata probabilmente nel Tre-Quattrocento.

Perché il campanile sembra una torre di castello?

Perché lo è. Il campanile è una delle torri perimetrali del castello medievale di Panzano, presa dalla chiesa — e in parte inglobata dalla nuova facciata quando la navata fu allungata attorno al 1900.

Il Crocifisso è davvero del Sansovino?

È attribuito a Jacopo Sansovino e datato 1510-1518. Ciò che è documentato è che una pulcram immaginem Cristi Crucifixi era già qui quando il vescovo Braccio Martelli fece la sua visita pastorale nel 1542.

Chi ha dipinto l'Annunciazione?

L'enciclopedia la dà alla bottega di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, intorno al 1520; Visit Tuscany la attribuisce a Michele Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. A Michele di Ridolfo sono attribuiti, separatamente, i portelli dipinti del ciborio nella stessa cappella: forse è lì che le due versioni divergono.

Si può entrare?

Nessuno pubblica orari o messe. È una parrocchiale in attività; una domenica mattina o il 15 agosto sono le occasioni migliori.

Che fine ha fatto il vecchio cimitero?

Fu dismesso in seguito all'editto di Saint-Cloud — Napoleone, 1802, promulgato per il Regno d'Italia nel 1806 — e il suo ingresso, che stava fra la chiesa e il campanile allora staccato, fu chiuso quando la navata venne prolungata sul davanti.

Che cosa sono le porte di bronzo?

Otto formelle di Umberto Bartoli, 1965, inserite in un portone di cipresso, con scene dei Vangeli e della Chiesa di quegli anni: il Concilio Vaticano II, Giovanni XXIII a Regina Coeli, Paolo VI col patriarca Atenagora.

Guarda Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti attraverso le foto dei viaggiatori →

Fonti e verifica Riguarda le affermazioni documentate di questa pagina.

Verificato su Wikipedia — The church of Santa Maria is a place of worship at Panzano in Chianti, a frazione of Greve in Chianti in the province of Florence, diocese of Fiesole, built between 1890 and 1903. It derived from the enlargement of a primitive Romanesque building recorded in the lists of the Rationes Decimarum per la Tuscia of 1274-75, itself probably enlarged in the fourteenth or fifteenth century with the use as a bell tower of one of the perimeter towers of the ancient medieval castle. At the end of the 1800s the church was contained between the two present great arches, without side chapels, and the bell tower remained detached from the church; between the two structures was the entrance to the cemetery, from which one reached the chapel of the Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata, believed to be the same seen today except for a direct access from the church, closed in the last restoration of the 1960s. The present aspect is due to the deep restructuring between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the creation of the side chapels and the prolongation of the central nave at the front, taking in with the new facade part of the bell tower and so closing the entrance to the old cemetery which, following the edict of Saint-Cloud issued by Napoleon in 1802 and promulgated for the Kingdom of Italy in 1806, had been decommissioned; the prolongation also affected the rear, creating the two present semicircles. These enlargements are clearly recognisable observing the left flank of the church from the old graveyard., From the Renaissance period the church of Santa Maria at Panzano had a single nave without an apse and measured about 19 metres long by 9 wide; in the rear wall behind the high altar opened two great stone windows with grilles and glazing, and the same in the facade; the side altars were set against the flanks, and from the left flank one reached a vaulted chapel housing the baptismal font, octagonal and in pietra serena, made around the year 1730 and in all probability the present one. In the floor were numerous burials of the most notable Panzano families of the time: Firidolfi, Quercetani, Petrucci, De Luigi, Baldi, Cappelletti., The castle is the highest and oldest part of Panzano; a good part of the walls that girded the hill is still conserved, though on two sides they have been reduced in height while on the south-east side they are missing altogether. Corner towers also survive, one of which has been reused as the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria while another still keeps its apparato a sporgere. The internal structure is simple: from the single access gate, which may originally have had an antiporta, a single street leads to a small piazzetta onto which the cassero faces, the cassero being a tall tower rising higher than all the other buildings; beside the access gate is a building of obviously medieval character. For the accuracy of the wall facing and the form of the archivolts, all the buildings of the castle date its structures to the twelfth century., The church of Santa Maria is a place of worship at Panzano in Chianti, a frazione of Greve in Chianti in the province of Florence, diocese of Fiesole, built between 1890 and 1903. It derived from the enlargement of a primitive Romanesque building recorded in the lists of the Rationes Decimarum per la Tuscia of 1274-75, itself probably enlarged in the fourteenth or fifteenth century with the use as a bell tower of one of the perimeter towers of the ancient medieval castle. At the end of the 1800s the church was contained between the two present great arches, without side chapels, and the bell tower remained detached from the church; between the two structures was the entrance to the cemetery, from which one reached the chapel of the Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata, believed to be the same seen today except for a direct access from the church, closed in the last restoration of the 1960s. The present aspect is due to the deep restructuring between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the creation of the side chapels and the prolongation of the central nave at the front, taking in with the new facade part of the bell tower and so closing the entrance to the old cemetery which, following the edict of Saint-Cloud issued by Napoleon in 1802 and promulgated for the Kingdom of Italy in 1806, had been decommissioned; the prolongation also affected the rear, creating the two present semicircles. These enlargements are clearly recognisable observing the left flank of the church from the old graveyard., The church of Santa Maria is a place of worship at Panzano in Chianti, a frazione of Greve in Chianti in the province of Florence, diocese of Fiesole, built between 1890 and 1903. It derived from the enlargement of a primitive Romanesque building recorded in the lists of the Rationes Decimarum per la Tuscia of 1274-75, itself probably enlarged in the fourteenth or fifteenth century with the use as a bell tower of one of the perimeter towers of the ancient medieval castle. At the end of the 1800s the church was contained between the two present great arches, without side chapels, and the bell tower remained detached from the church; between the two structures was the entrance to the cemetery, from which one reached the chapel of the Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata, believed to be the same seen today except for a direct access from the church, closed in the last restoration of the 1960s. The present aspect is due to the deep restructuring between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the creation of the side chapels and the prolongation of the central nave at the front, taking in with the new facade part of the bell tower and so closing the entrance to the old cemetery which, following the edict of Saint-Cloud issued by Napoleon in 1802 and promulgated for the Kingdom of Italy in 1806, had been decommissioned; the prolongation also affected the rear, creating the two present semicircles. These enlargements are clearly recognisable observing the left flank of the church from the old graveyard., From the Renaissance period the church of Santa Maria at Panzano had a single nave without an apse and measured about 19 metres long by 9 wide; in the rear wall behind the high altar opened two great stone windows with grilles and glazing, and the same in the facade; the side altars were set against the flanks, and from the left flank one reached a vaulted chapel housing the baptismal font, octagonal and in pietra serena, made around the year 1730 and in all probability the present one. In the floor were numerous burials of the most notable Panzano families of the time: Firidolfi, Quercetani, Petrucci, De Luigi, Baldi, Cappelletti., The oldest furnishing of the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta at Panzano is a small fourteenth-century panel of the Madonna and Child referred to Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni, framed in the following century by a panel with saints executed by Bernardo Rosselli, now in the third chapel on the left. In the chapel of the Annunciation, entered from the right side of the church, are an Annunciation from the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio executed around 1520 -- the tabula egregie dipincta cum immagine Anunciationis B. M. recalled by the bishop of Fiesole Braccio Martelli (1501-1560) in the pastoral visit of 1542 -- and a wooden Crucifix attributed to Jacopo Sansovino and dated between 1510 and 1518, also recalled by bishop Martelli as a pulcram immaginem Cristi Crucifixi, carved in polychrome poplar with a loincloth of linen cloth gessoed and painted blue with gilded decoration, of which Francesca Petrucci wrote after the restoration of 1998 that it had revealed a harmonious Renaissance structure heightened by the presence of the original polychromy of very fine pictorial quality. The same chapel holds an old gilded wooden ciborium in the form of a hexagonal tempietto of the late sixteenth century, the painted decorations of whose door panels are attributed to Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, together with old vestments embroidered in gold and silk and ancient reliquaries. Another important Crucifix attributed to a fifteenth-century Florentine sculptor stands on the altar of the first chapel on the left, also in poplar with a gessoed linen loincloth painted blue; the octagonal pietra serena font at the entrance on the right was made around 1730 by the then prior Giuseppe Maria Mammoli by order of the bishop of Fiesole Luigi Maria Strozzi; and in the first chapel on the right is a canvas of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Sant'Antonio di Padova painted by Pier Dandini in the mid-seventeenth century., The great cypress-wood portal of the church of Santa Maria at Panzano encloses eight bronze panels by the sculptor Umberto Bartoli (1965) depicting the Holy Family, the Sermon on the Mount, the Four Evangelists, the ecstasy of Saint Francis and Saint Catherine of Siena persuading the pope to return to Rome from Avignon, together with the most salient events of the Church of those years -- the Second Vatican Council, the visit of Saint John XXIII to Regina Coeli and the meeting of the blessed Paul VI with the patriarch Athenagoras. By the same sculptor is the Madonna surrounded by angels standing out in white plaster on the facade above the portal., The castle is the highest and oldest part of Panzano; a good part of the walls that girded the hill is still conserved, though on two sides they have been reduced in height while on the south-east side they are missing altogether. Corner towers also survive, one of which has been reused as the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria while another still keeps its apparato a sporgere. The internal structure is simple: from the single access gate, which may originally have had an antiporta, a single street leads to a small piazzetta onto which the cassero faces, the cassero being a tall tower rising higher than all the other buildings; beside the access gate is a building of obviously medieval character. For the accuracy of the wall facing and the form of the archivolts, all the buildings of the castle date its structures to the twelfth century., The church of Santa Maria is a place of worship at Panzano in Chianti, a frazione of Greve in Chianti in the province of Florence, diocese of Fiesole, built between 1890 and 1903. It derived from the enlargement of a primitive Romanesque building recorded in the lists of the Rationes Decimarum per la Tuscia of 1274-75, itself probably enlarged in the fourteenth or fifteenth century with the use as a bell tower of one of the perimeter towers of the ancient medieval castle. At the end of the 1800s the church was contained between the two present great arches, without side chapels, and the bell tower remained detached from the church; between the two structures was the entrance to the cemetery, from which one reached the chapel of the Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata, believed to be the same seen today except for a direct access from the church, closed in the last restoration of the 1960s. The present aspect is due to the deep restructuring between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the creation of the side chapels and the prolongation of the central nave at the front, taking in with the new facade part of the bell tower and so closing the entrance to the old cemetery which, following the edict of Saint-Cloud issued by Napoleon in 1802 and promulgated for the Kingdom of Italy in 1806, had been decommissioned; the prolongation also affected the rear, creating the two present semicircles. These enlargements are clearly recognisable observing the left flank of the church from the old graveyard., The castle is the highest and oldest part of Panzano; a good part of the walls that girded the hill is still conserved, though on two sides they have been reduced in height while on the south-east side they are missing altogether. Corner towers also survive, one of which has been reused as the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria while another still keeps its apparato a sporgere. The internal structure is simple: from the single access gate, which may originally have had an antiporta, a single street leads to a small piazzetta onto which the cassero faces, the cassero being a tall tower rising higher than all the other buildings; beside the access gate is a building of obviously medieval character. For the accuracy of the wall facing and the form of the archivolts, all the buildings of the castle date its structures to the twelfth century., The oldest furnishing of the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta at Panzano is a small fourteenth-century panel of the Madonna and Child referred to Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni, framed in the following century by a panel with saints executed by Bernardo Rosselli, now in the third chapel on the left. In the chapel of the Annunciation, entered from the right side of the church, are an Annunciation from the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio executed around 1520 -- the tabula egregie dipincta cum immagine Anunciationis B. M. recalled by the bishop of Fiesole Braccio Martelli (1501-1560) in the pastoral visit of 1542 -- and a wooden Crucifix attributed to Jacopo Sansovino and dated between 1510 and 1518, also recalled by bishop Martelli as a pulcram immaginem Cristi Crucifixi, carved in polychrome poplar with a loincloth of linen cloth gessoed and painted blue with gilded decoration, of which Francesca Petrucci wrote after the restoration of 1998 that it had revealed a harmonious Renaissance structure heightened by the presence of the original polychromy of very fine pictorial quality. The same chapel holds an old gilded wooden ciborium in the form of a hexagonal tempietto of the late sixteenth century, the painted decorations of whose door panels are attributed to Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, together with old vestments embroidered in gold and silk and ancient reliquaries. Another important Crucifix attributed to a fifteenth-century Florentine sculptor stands on the altar of the first chapel on the left, also in poplar with a gessoed linen loincloth painted blue; the octagonal pietra serena font at the entrance on the right was made around 1730 by the then prior Giuseppe Maria Mammoli by order of the bishop of Fiesole Luigi Maria Strozzi; and in the first chapel on the right is a canvas of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Sant'Antonio di Padova painted by Pier Dandini in the mid-seventeenth century., The great cypress-wood portal of the church of Santa Maria at Panzano encloses eight bronze panels by the sculptor Umberto Bartoli (1965) depicting the Holy Family, the Sermon on the Mount, the Four Evangelists, the ecstasy of Saint Francis and Saint Catherine of Siena persuading the pope to return to Rome from Avignon, together with the most salient events of the Church of those years -- the Second Vatican Council, the visit of Saint John XXIII to Regina Coeli and the meeting of the blessed Paul VI with the patriarch Athenagoras. By the same sculptor is the Madonna surrounded by angels standing out in white plaster on the facade above the portal. (ottobre 2026).
Verificato su Visit Tuscany (Toscana Promozione Turistica) — Visit Tuscany places Panzano in Chianti a few miles from Greve in Chianti, exactly halfway between Florence and Siena, with the Conca d'Oro at the foot of the village described as a mosaic of rows of vines, olive groves and woods; it records the Panzano Castle as documented since the 11th century, still retaining large sections of the medieval walls after the damage of the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, and the Church of Santa Maria in Panzano as rebuilt in the 19th century on an earlier medieval church, holding a fourteenth-century Madonna and Child and an Annunciation attributed to Michele Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. It names the Parish Church of San Leolino as one of the oldest churches in Chianti. (ottobre 2026).
Verificato su Comune di Greve in Chianti — The Comune di Greve in Chianti publishes no opening hours and no admission price for any building at Panzano in Chianti, and no transport timetable serving it. (ottobre 2026).