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Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

Discover Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti

Last updated on November 3, 2026

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Introduction

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, in the diocese of Fiesole. It is the parish church of the village, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, whose feast on 15 August is Panzano's patronal day.

The building standing now is of 1890 to 1903. It replaced, at the end of the nineteenth century, the ancient church of Santa Maria that stood a little outside the castle.

Underneath it is a church recorded in a tax list. The present building 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 by taking over, as a bell tower, one of the perimeter towers of the ancient medieval castle.

At the end of the 1800s it was still two buildings. The church was contained between the two great arches that are there now, without side chapels, and the bell tower stood detached from it. Between the two structures was the entrance to the cemetery.

Architecture

The church is a nineteenth-century envelope round older parts. Its present aspect is due to the restructuring of 1890–1903; what survives from before is the line of the two great arches that contained the old nave, and the tower.

The bell tower is military architecture reused. It is one of the perimeter towers of the medieval castle, adopted as a campanile probably in the fourteenth or fifteenth century — and then partly enclosed by the new facade when the nave was pushed forward, which is why tower and church now read as a single mass rather than two buildings.

The plan grew at both ends and sideways. Side chapels where there had been none; the nave prolonged at the front; and at the back two semicircles replacing a flat Renaissance termination that itself had no apse.

The joins are visible from one specific place. The record is precise about it: the enlargements are clearly recognisable observing the left flank of the church from the old graveyard.

The Renaissance church is recoverable on paper. One nave, no apse, roughly 19 by 9 metres, two large grilled and glazed stone windows behind the high altar and two more in the facade, altars against the side walls, and a vaulted side chapel for the font.

The short history

A Romanesque church in the tithe lists of 1274-75, enlarged around a castle tower, and rebuilt between 1890 and 1903.

Read the full historical timeline guide →

How it was built and evolved over time

The cheapest campanile is somebody else's tower. Rather than build one, the parish took over a perimeter tower of the castle — stone already standing, already tall, already owned by the community. The conversion is the single most economical decision in the building's history.

Growing a church forwards is harder than it sounds. Pushing the nave out at the front meant building a new facade that had to meet the existing tower, and the solution was to absorb part of the tower into it. That also walled up the cemetery entrance between the two structures.

The rear was extended into curves because the old church had none. The Renaissance building ended flat, senza abside; the two semicircles are an addition of the same turn-of-century campaign.

Pietra serena is the stone for anything carved. The octagonal font of about 1730 is cut from it, as the dressed elements of Chianti churches usually are.

The sculpture is poplar, linen and gesso. Both Crucifixes here are carved in poplar, with loincloths of linen cloth stiffened with gesso and painted blue — a light, cheap, workable combination, and the reason the 1998 restoration could recover "the original polychromy of very fine pictorial quality" underneath.

And the twentieth century worked in bronze. Eight cast panels set into a cypress-wood portal, 1965, by Umberto Bartoli.

Frequently asked questions

How old is this church?

The building is of 1890–1903. It grew out of a Romanesque church recorded in the tithe lists of 1274–75, enlarged probably in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

Why does the bell tower look like a castle tower?

Because it is one. The campanile is one of the perimeter towers of the medieval castle of Panzano, taken over by the church — and partly swallowed by the new facade when the nave was lengthened around 1900.

Is the Crucifix really by Sansovino?

It is attributed to Jacopo Sansovino and dated 1510–1518. What is documented is that a pulcram immaginem Cristi Crucifixi was already here when bishop Braccio Martelli made his pastoral visit in 1542.

Who painted the Annunciation?

The encyclopaedia gives it to the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, around 1520; Visit Tuscany attributes it to Michele Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. Michele di Ridolfo is independently credited with the painted panels of the ciborium in the same chapel, which may be where the two accounts diverge.

Can I go in?

No opening hours or Mass times are published by anyone. It is a working parish church; a Sunday morning or 15 August are the best chances.

What happened to the old cemetery?

It was decommissioned following the edict of Saint-Cloud — Napoleon, 1802, promulgated for the Kingdom of Italy in 1806 — and its entrance, which lay between the church and the then-detached bell tower, was closed when the nave was prolonged at the front.

What are the bronze doors?

Eight panels by Umberto Bartoli, 1965, set in a cypress-wood portal, showing scenes from the Gospels and from the Church of those years — the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII at Regina Coeli, Paul VI with the patriarch Athenagoras.

See Chiesa di Santa Maria, Panzano in Chianti through traveler photos →

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., 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. (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. (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. (October 2026).