Pieve di San Giorgio di Valpolicella Site Features

The church is a Romanesque basilica in local stone: three aisles, a raised presbytery, semicircular apses, and a plain gabled front. The masonry is the pale limestone of the Valpolicella hills, laid in regular courses.

Reused Roman material appears throughout -- column shafts, capitals, inscribed blocks -- taken from earlier structures on and around the site, which was normal practice and is unusually visible here.

The cloister on the south side is small, twelfth-century, with paired columns and simple carved capitals. It is one of the few Romanesque cloisters in the Veronese countryside to survive.

The ciborium of 712 is the outstanding object: a carved stone altar canopy from the Lombard period, with interlace ornament and an inscription recording its commissioning. Its fragments are now shown in the museum rather than in situ.

The detached bell tower is Romanesque and matches the church.

The ciborium of 712

A dated Lombard altar canopy with interlace carving and a naming inscription -- among the most significant early medieval sculptures in the region.

The cloister

Small, twelfth-century, and a rare survival in the Veronese countryside.

The reused Roman stone

Column shafts and inscribed blocks built into the fabric, visible without needing to be pointed out.

The view

The terrace looks across the whole of Valpolicella toward the Adige and the Lessini -- the best single overview of the wine region.

The church stands on a terrace at around 300 metres, on the ridge above Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella, at the western end of the region where the valleys open toward the Adige.

The rock here is the pale limestone that Sant'Ambrogio has quarried since Roman times, including the Rosso Verona marble that faces much of Verona -- and the quarry faces are visible on the slopes nearby.

Below and around the church the ground is terraced and planted with vines; behind it the Lessini rise toward the Ponte di Veja and the high plateau.

The terrace in front of the church is the natural viewpoint over the whole region.