Discover Church of San Pietro

Last updated on October 8, 2026

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Introduction

The church of San Pietro is the main attraction of Tuscania, and it stands apart from the town on St Peter's Hill -- the old acropolis, which was ringed with walls when the city proper was founded in the seventh century BC. It is built in Lombard-Romanesque style, begun in the year 739 and renovated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Architecture

The facade, with its rose window, dates from the twelfth century. Inside there is a nave and two aisles, divided by low columns and by pilasters that incorporate half-columns, carrying capitals of both antique and medieval date.

The short history

Eighth century or eleventh? A hundred years of argument, and no document to settle it.

Read the full historical timeline guide →

How it was built and evolved over time

The construction date is disputed and the dispute is the point. Pietro Toesca argued that maestri comacini built San Pietro in the eighth century, when Charlemagne gave Tuscania to Pope Hadrian I. If that is right the church is a landmark in Italian architecture, because it marks the passage from Early Christian forms to Romanesque ones. The 1093 cut into the ciborium would then date not the building but a rebuilding of it, over something older -- and the capitals and marble fragments scattered through the church, together with a stretch of the crypt that looks distinctly older and seems to have been kept as the core of the new work, would be what is left of that earlier structure. More recent scholarship puts the construction in the eleventh century instead, which strips it of any innovation; in 1997 Renato Bonelli went further and read it as an example of the reactionary streak in central Italian building between 1000 and the mid-1200s, the refusal to vault. No documentary source survives to settle it.

What is certain begins at the end of the twelfth century. Between then and the early thirteenth the two bays were rebuilt and the present facade put up.

Then four centuries of alteration. Interventions are recorded in 1443, 1450, 1500 and 1734, followed by repeated restorations through the nineteenth century.

The 1971 earthquake is the event the building still shows. It destroyed the rose window and badly damaged the adjoining Palazzo dei Canonici, then housing the national archaeological museum, which was afterwards moved elsewhere. It also destroyed the Christ Pantocrator among angels in the apse -- Roman school with Byzantine influence, from around 1100 -- which had dominated the interior; only fragments of its framing survive.

The church outlived its own diocese. San Pietro served as cathedral of the diocese of Tuscania until 1573. Among the ruins of late antique and early medieval buildings standing near it, nobody has been able to establish which belonged to the bishop's palace.

Frequently asked questions

How old is the church?

Disputed, and there is no document to settle it. Pietro Toesca dated the building to the eighth century, which would make it a hinge between Early Christian and Romanesque architecture; more recent scholarship puts it in the eleventh, and Renato Bonelli argued in 1997 that it is positively reactionary. The ciborium carries an inscribed 1093, which may date the building or a rebuilding of something older.

Is the rose window original?

No. The original was destroyed in the earthquake that struck the province of Viterbo in 1971.

What happened to the frescoes?

Most are lost. The Christ Pantocrator among angels that filled the apse, from around 1100, was destroyed in the 1971 earthquake. Fragments of its framing survive, along with a blessing Christ between two bishops in the right apsidiole, a Baptism of Christ in the left, and in the crypt a Madonna enthroned and a fourteenth-century fresco of Tuscania's patron saints attributed to Gregorio d'Arezzo.

Is there a charge?

No. Entry is free.

Can a group just turn up?

No. Booking is always compulsory for groups, a group may not exceed 20 people including the guide, and 25 people may not be in the crypt at the same time.

Was it a cathedral?

Yes, of the diocese of Tuscania, until 1573.

See Church of San Pietro through traveler photos →

Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The main portal of San Pietro is recessed into a wall of nenfro blocks, the work of a Roman marble-cutter of the Cosmatesque school, with three orders of plain columns, capitals and archivolts, the largest carrying lateral mosaics and bosses decorated with signs of the zodiac and figures of the seasonal labours, the lunette decorated with a star-pattern mosaic and the door set in a marble frame with mosaic decoration, Above the loggia is the Cosmatesque rose window of three concentric circles referring to the Holy Trinity, with four sculptures at its corners recalling the Evangelists -- eagle, angel, lion and calf for John, Matthew, Mark and Luke -- and two dragons chasing prey at its sides, flanked by two two-light windows, the right surrounded by fantastic and demonic figures and the left by the Agnus Dei and representations of angels and Fathers of the Church, with a relief at the base of the left window, possibly a reused Etruscan or more probably Roman sculpture, representing a man running or perhaps dancing, The interior of San Pietro is divided into three naves, the central one with a Cosmatesque floor of geometric decoration marking the spaces of the first construction and separated from the others by a low wall with stone seats cut into it; the right nave has a thirteenth-century ciborium and the main entrance to the crypt, the left the secondary crypt entrance beneath a frescoed niche and several Etruscan sarcophagi, and the raised presbytery holds an eleventh-century ciborium with an inscription of 1093, a bishop's seat and a Romanesque ambo built from early medieval elements, under a timber truss roof, The hall crypt of San Pietro is articulated by twenty-eight columns, almost all reused from Roman or early medieval buildings, supporting a roof divided into small cross vaults, with part of the walling also Roman in opus reticulatum, and dating probably from the twelfth century; a Madonna enthroned among angels in the altar apsidiole and a fourteenth-century fresco of the patron saints of Tuscania -- Secondiano, Marcelliano and Veriano -- attributed to Gregorio d'Arezzo have come down to us, The dating of the church is disputed: Pietro Toesca held that it was built by maestri comacini in the eighth century, when Charlemagne gave Tuscania to Pope Hadrian I, which would make it a landmark marking the passage from Early Christian to Romanesque forms, while the 1093 inscribed on the ciborium could be the date of a reconstruction of the whole building over an older one; more recent studies place the construction in the eleventh century, and in a 1997 text Renato Bonelli saw in it an example of the reactionary refusal of vaulted construction typical of central Italian artistic culture between 1000 and the mid-1200s. The absence of documentary sources prevents the question being settled (October 2026).