Church of San Pietro site features

The church stands on its own hill outside Tuscania, on what was probably the Etruscan acropolis. Its front faces a grassy clearing between the canons' palace and three massive defensive towers -- all that remains of more, and a measure of how strategic this ground was -- while from the other side the very tall apse rises towards the town.

The facade

The centre of the front steps forward, and nearly everything worth looking at is on it. The main portal is recessed into a wall of nenfro blocks, the work of a Roman marble-cutter of the Cosmatesque school: three orders of plain columns with capitals and archivolts, the outermost carrying mosaic down its sides and bosses cut with the signs of the zodiac and the labours of the seasons. The lunette is mosaic in a pattern of stars, and the whole door is set in a marble frame inlaid the same way. The small columns carry capitals of several shapes, one of them a pair of hands raised in a gesture of salvation.

Above the portal runs a blind loggia of ten little columns with Ionic capitals under eleven marble arches, with a winged griffon at each end holding prey in its claws. Above that is the Cosmatesque rose window, three concentric circles for the Trinity, with four carved figures at its corners for the Evangelists -- eagle, angel, lion and calf for John, Matthew, Mark and Luke -- and a dragon on either side chasing its prey. Beyond the dragons are two two-light windows: the right one ringed with fantastic and demonic figures, the left with the Agnus Dei, angels and Fathers of the Church. At the foot of the left window is a relief of a man running, or perhaps dancing, almost certainly reused from an Etruscan or more probably a Roman carving.

Inside

A nave and two aisles under an open timber roof. The nave is separated from the aisles by a low wall with stone seats cut into it, and its Cosmatesque floor, laid in geometric patterns, marks out the footprint of the earlier building. In the right aisle is a thirteenth-century ciborium and the main way down to the crypt; in the left, the second crypt entrance under a frescoed niche, and a row of Etruscan sarcophagi. The raised presbytery holds an eleventh-century ciborium carrying the inscribed date 1093, a bishop's throne -- San Pietro was the cathedral of Tuscania -- and a Romanesque ambo built out of earlier medieval pieces.

Most of the painting is gone. The Christ Pantocrator among angels that filled the apse, Roman school with Byzantine influence, from the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was destroyed in the 1971 earthquake; only parts of what framed it survive -- a blessing Christ, angels, apostles and divine symbols. The right apsidiole has a blessing Christ between two bishops, the left a Baptism of Christ. A fragment of a cycle on the life of Saint Peter survives at the top of the presbytery.

The crypt

A hall crypt on twenty-eight columns, almost all of them reused from Roman or early medieval buildings, carrying a roof divided into small cross-vaults. Part of the walling is Roman too, in opus reticulatum. It probably dates from the twelfth century. Two paintings survive: a Madonna enthroned among angels in the altar apsidiole, and a fourteenth-century fresco of Tuscania's patron saints -- Secondiano, Marcelliano and Veriano -- attributed to Gregorio d'Arezzo.

The portal

Cut by a Roman marble-worker of the Cosmatesque school and recessed into the nenfro wall in three orders, the outermost carrying mosaic along its sides and bosses worked with the signs of the zodiac and the labours of the seasons. The lunette above is a mosaic of stars.

The rose window

Cosmatesque, three concentric circles standing for the Trinity, with the four Evangelists carved at its corners as eagle, angel, lion and calf, and a dragon on each side chasing prey. The original was destroyed in the earthquake of 1971.

The blind loggia and its griffons

Ten small columns with Ionic capitals under eleven marble arches, directly above the portal, with a winged griffon at either end holding prey in its claws.

The running man

At the base of the left two-light window, a relief of a man running or dancing -- a reused piece, probably Roman and possibly Etruscan, set into a Christian facade without apology.

The ciborium of 1093

In the raised presbytery, carrying the inscribed date 1093, which is the one fixed point in the long argument about when this church was built.

The crypt

A hall of twenty-eight columns, almost every one of them taken from a Roman or early medieval building, under small cross-vaults; parts of the walls are Roman opus reticulatum. Probably twelfth-century.

The patron saints of Tuscania

A fourteenth-century fresco in the crypt showing Secondiano, Marcelliano and Veriano, attributed to Gregorio d'Arezzo, alongside a Madonna enthroned among angels in the altar apsidiole.

The Cosmatesque nave floor

Geometric mosaic laid in the nave, marking out the footprint of the building that stood here before the present one.