Chiesa di San Salvatore, Castellina in Chianti historical timeline

The building was medieval. That is all the record claims for its origin, and the reason it cannot claim more is what happened next.

It was destroyed during the last world war and subsequently rebuilt in neo-Romanesque style, the work entrusted to the Sienese architect Menotti Lucattelli. Castellina was not alone in this: the pieve di Sant'Agnese in the same comune was also largely rebuilt after war damage, and in that case only the base of the bell tower survives of the medieval fabric.

Its importance is older than the building and independent of it. A wealthy Sienese family gave the church the body of San Fausto martire; from that moment San Fausto became protector of the Chianti, invoked against drought and at the vintage. He remains the patron of the comune, with his feast on 18 September.

The church is embedded in the town's identity. When Castellina's coat of arms was recognised by decree on 17 October 1932, the design chosen was a church flanked by a tower with a cockerel above it — the cock crowing from the ruined tower beside the ancient church of San Salvatore, emblem of the Lega del Chianti and memory of the truce between the Florentine and Sienese republics.

Its works outlived its walls. The Maestro di Signa fresco, the wooden San Barnaba and the reliquary all passed through the destruction and into the new building — which is the usual, and the only, reason a rebuilt parish church is worth entering.

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