Pieve di San Giorgio di Valpolicella Historical Timeline

Origins

The hilltop was occupied long before the church: there is evidence of prehistoric and Roman use, and the site commands the point where the Valpolicella valleys open toward the Adige.

Turning points

The ciborium of 712 establishes that a church stood here in the Lombard period, and its inscription names the men who commissioned it -- a rare and precise fixed point in a period that leaves very little dated evidence.

Influential people

The present church was built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a pieve -- a parish church with baptismal rights over a wide rural district, the organising unit of the medieval countryside.

Cultural evolution

The cloister was added in the twelfth century for the community of clergy serving the pieve.

Present-day significance

The church is still in parish use, and the ciborium fragments and other early material are displayed in a small museum in the cloister.