Pieve and Palace with fountain. La Pieve is the oldest religious monument of San Leo. built in the ninth century, with material salvaged from a Roman temple to Jupiter, by Byzantine-influenced architects from Ravenna. It is the first material evidence of the Christianisation of this inland area. The Church of San Leo can be depicted metaphorically as a ship aground on a rock, a stone ship anchored forever to the rock that supports it. The building is in fact placed astride a rocky protuberance of the rock so that San Leo, respectively to the east and west, there is room for two rooms below the aisles: the crypt or confessional and the so-called Shrine of San Leone which bears the traces of a sort of apse carved directly into the rock, is accessed by an exterior door near the front.
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