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Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

Last updated on November 3, 2026

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What makes Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti special

The bell tower of Santa Maria was built to be shot from, not rung from: the church took over one of the perimeter towers of the medieval castle as its campanile, and then, in the rebuilding of 1890–1903 , grew forwards until the new facade swallowed part of it. Inside hangs a polychrome poplar Crucifix attributed to Jacopo Sansovino and dated 1510–1518 , beside an Annunciation from the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio — both already here when the bishop of Fiesole inspected the parish in 1542 . The friction is that most of what you walk into is Victorian. The side chapels, the lengthened nave and the two apsidal semicircles are all from that campaign, and the Romanesque church underneath is only legible in fragments. The smart way is to go round to the old graveyard first. From there, looking at the left flank , the enlargements are clearly recognisable — you can see exactly where the nineteenth century begins. Then go in for the Annunciation chapel, which is the part worth the trip.

Visiting tips and strategy

When to go

15 August, if you want certainty. Santa Maria Assunta is the titular and the patron of Panzano, and the feast is the one day the church is unmistakably in use.

Sunday morning otherwise. No Mass times are published anywhere, so this is a reasonable bet rather than a promise.

The third weekend in September brings the village to it. Vino al Vino fills Piazza Bucciarelli below, and Panzano Alto is at its busiest.

Any daylight for the exterior. The left flank from the old graveyard is the view that explains the building, and it is always available.

Winter is quiet and mostly shut, as everything at Panzano is.

Verified against Comune di Greve in Chianti, October 2026.

Getting there and getting in

No opening hours, Mass times or admission for this church are published by the Comune di Greve in Chianti or by any other source read for this page, and the comune publishes none for any building at Panzano. It is the village's parish church; the absence means nothing is ticketed, not that the door is open.

The likeliest time to find it open is a Sunday morning, and the certain time is 15 August, the patronal feast of Santa Maria Assunta.

Look at the outside from the old graveyard. That is where the record says the enlargements are clearly recognisable, on the left flank, and it costs nothing and needs no door.

Getting here. The church stands in the village, just below the castle whose tower it took. Panzano has no railway station and no published bus service; park at Piazza Gastone Bucciarelli down at Campana and walk up.

Administration is at Greve. Comune di Greve in Chianti, Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 7/8, 50022 Greve in Chianti (FI), switchboard 055 8545 1.

Quick facts

Type: Church, Sacred Place, Historic Place
Local name: Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti (vedi la pagina italiana)
Built: Romanesque origin recorded in the tithes of 1274-75; present building 1890-1903
Architectural style: Nineteenth-century rebuilding with side chapels, absorbing a medieval castle tower as its bell tower

Where it is

Get directions Open in Apple Maps

Visit responsibly

This is the parish church of a village of about 1,161 people. It is in use; it is not a museum with a ticket desk.

If a service is on, do not walk round photographing during it. That applies especially on 15 August.

The paintings and the two wooden Crucifixes are fragile. One Crucifix was restored as recently as 1998 to recover its original polychromy. No flash, nothing touched, and no leaning on altar rails.

The old graveyard is a graveyard. It was decommissioned after the edict of Saint-Cloud, but it is still the place where this village buried its dead, and the best view of the church is from inside it.

Park at Campana and walk. The streets by the church are narrow and residential.

Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against 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., Panzano in Chianti is a frazione of the comune of Greve in Chianti, in the province of Florence, with 1,161 inhabitants, standing at 510 metres; its patron is Santa Maria Assunta, kept on 15 August., A little outside the castle of Panzano stood the ancient church dedicated to Santa Maria, which at the end of the nineteenth century was replaced by the present one., 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 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 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., Panzano in Chianti is a frazione of the comune of Greve in Chianti, in the province of Florence, with 1,161 inhabitants, standing at 510 metres; its patron is Santa Maria Assunta, kept on 15 August., 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., Panzano in Chianti is a frazione of the comune of Greve in Chianti, in the province of Florence, with 1,161 inhabitants, standing at 510 metres; its patron is Santa Maria Assunta, kept on 15 August., 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 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 zone called Campana rises at the foot of the hill of Panzano at the crossing between the strada dei poggi, which winds along the watershed between the Greve and the Pesa joining San Casciano in Val di Pesa to Volpaia by way of the Castello delle Stinche, and the via Chiantigiana which leads towards Radda in Chianti and Castellina in Chianti; the Passo di Campana is at 480 m above sea level, and the name derives from the shape of piazza Gastone Bucciarelli, which seen from above resembles a bell. (October 2026).
Checked against 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., Panzano in Chianti holds the wine festival Vino al Vino on the third weekend in September at Piazza Bucciarelli, and a spring edition, Vino al Vino in Cantina, held in the cellars. (October 2026).
Checked against 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., 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., Panzano in Chianti is a frazione administered by the Comune di Greve in Chianti, whose seat is at Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 7/8, 50022 Greve in Chianti (FI), with the switchboard 055 8545 1, and whose Polizia Municipale is at Via di Colognole 63/65, 50022 Greve in Chianti. There is no municipal office at Panzano itself. (October 2026).

Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

What makes Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti special

Challenge to visitors

Visiting tips and strategy

When to go

Getting the good version

What it costs

Getting there and getting in

Place accessibility

Quick facts

Where it is

Visit responsibly

Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

What makes Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti special

Challenge to visitors

Visiting tips and strategy

When to go

Getting the good version

What it costs

Getting there and getting in

Place accessibility

Quick facts

Where it is

Visit responsibly

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