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Sancta Maria de Pilli: an all Tuscan story
The church of Santa Maria de Castroveteri rises 473 meters above sea level, on a site of ancient origins, located along the Via Cassia Vetus or Clodia, already inhabited in Etruscan and Roman times.
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The archaeologist Gian Francesco Gamurrini remembers in his handwritten papers as in the church "in castro Pigli" was found in 1803 or 1805 a circular stone with inscription, now lost (Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum).
The area of ​​the castrum et curtis de Pinli was, between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, an object of interest and a contest between the most influential representatives of civil and ecclesiastical power.
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In the eleventh century the whole area between Piglie and Puliciano was owned by the Marquises of Monte di S. Maria. Probably founded in the Early Middle Ages as a castle church, whose attestation at Pilli dates back to 1079, S. Maria in Catroveteri appears documented, albeit indirectly, since 1182.
The donation of properties located in Pilli by Ronaldino di Mambilia of the Longobards of Dorna to the Canonica of San Donato of Arezzo dates back to this date.
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The church of Santa Maria also plays a major role following the construction of the new castle, built further downstream after 1269 by the Burali family, which also has the patronage of the same church. At the church of S. Maria de Pilli, dependent on the Pieve a Quarto, it is instead referred to at the beginning of the XIV century in the Rationes Decimarum.
In 1583 the church was reunited with that of St. Andrew, also documented from the fourteenth century and located a few hundred meters further down, becoming an oratory, and the Apostolic Visitor in that same year gave orders to cancel "certain paintings" inside the church.
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The stone on the facade with the date of 1676 may refer to a restoration of the building. Inside the documents attest since the sixteenth century a Marian icon considered miraculous, and therefore venerated, depicting Our Lady of the Assumption in Heaven: the Apostolic Visitor of 1583 remembers how every first Sunday of the month the population of Pigli and the surrounding area procession.
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The church was the object of a further reconstruction between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and today, after years of neglect, it has returned to new splendor thanks to a skilful restoration.
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