Pieve di Corsignano site features

The church stands outside Pienza, below the town, in open country — the first thing to register is that you are leaving a designed Renaissance square and arriving somewhere entirely rural.

The cylindrical bell tower is what you see first and what makes the building memorable. A round campanile is unusual in Tuscany, where towers are square, and this one shows Ravenna influence and is referable to the 11th century, which makes it older than the church attached to it.

The facade rewards standing still in front of. Its portal projects slightly, and in the splay of the opening are two small columns on which two arches meet: an outer one decorated with a zig-zag, containing an inner one carved with vegetal motifs. Above the portal opens a two-light mullioned window, and its capital is a crutch capital carried on the figure of a woman — a small piece of Romanesque figure carving doing structural work, and the detail most people miss.

Walk round to the right side and there is a second portal. It is plainer in construction but richly carved, and on its architrave are the Journey of the Magi and the Nativity: a narrative in stone on a side door of a country church.

Inside, three naves are divided by quadrangular pillars, and the arcades on the right look like a later phase than the rest. The east end is where the building is most obviously incomplete: the terminal part has lost its apses, so the church now simply stops.

Beneath the right nave is a small apsed crypt, and in the body of the church the simple baptismal font in which Pius II and Pius III were baptised.

The bare, rough character of the interior — the quality visitors most often describe as authentic — is largely the work of a 1925 restoration, which is worth knowing before reading the room as untouched.

• The baptismal font — simple, and the place where the future popes Pius II and Pius III were both baptised: the single most remarkable fact about this church.
• The cylindrical bell tower (11th century) — round rather than square, showing Ravenna influence, and older than the church beside it; an unusual form for Tuscany.
• The main portal — slightly projecting, with two small columns in the splay carrying an arch decorated with a zig-zag that contains a second arch of vegetal motifs.
• The mullioned window with its female figure — set above the portal, with a crutch capital supported by a woman's figure.
• The side portal on the right — simpler in make but richly decorated, its architrave carved with the Journey of the Magi and the Nativity.
• The three naves on quadrangular pillars (mostly 12th century) — with the right-hand arcades of a visibly later phase.
• The missing apses — the terminal end of the church is today without them, so the building stops rather than closing.
• The small apsed crypt — preserved beneath the right nave.
• The 1925 restoration — responsible for the rustic character of the interior, and worth identifying rather than mistaking for untouched Romanesque.