HISTORY
Close to the town of Coscogno (of Roman origin), sits the old Romanesque parish church dedicated to Sant’Apollinare. The first document attesting to the presence of the church is from 996, when Sant’Apollinare belonged to the castle of Chiagnano. Its function as parish church was recorded for the first time in 1035. The dedication to a Byzantine martyr from Ravenna has led some scholars to conclude, however, that the church was built before the end of Byzantine domination (7-8th c).

ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The present-day appearance of the church is the result of work from 1648, a date carved on a panel high on the upper part of the building. At that date the façade was reworked and the choir and lateral chapels were built.
The façade portal from the 13th century remains in its Romanesque style, surmounted by a rare sculpted lunette from the 11-12th centuries, and embellished by two thin columns with capital and leaves that hold up a cornice decorated by pinnacles, and an architrave with sculpture set inside. The sculpted lunette, from the age of Matilda, depicts a fight between two dear, with one in front of the other and a stylized palm leaf between. The semicircular border was decorated by a braided frieze, of which only three small tracts remain at the edges. The lunette motif comes from the Burgundian culture that reached these kinds of places thanks to pilgrims, since Coscogno was a crossroads along the road that brought them to Rome.