HISTORY
The first written mention of the parish church of San Martino in Rafaneto is from 1059, however the first certain reference in not until 1230. These records inform us that this little church was the primitive settlement of Verrucchio, which later moved to the top of the hill in a fortified precinct. It is presumed that the architecture is datable to the 12th century, but recent studies, after the interventions of restorations, an earlier building has been hypothesized, on the foundations of a Roman settlement. Several damaged bricks and other fragments confirm these hypotheses. During the archaeological digs of 1893, three Roman tombstones from the imperial era were found, as well as a sundial from the same period, which are today preserved at the Sasso Fortress. The monastery reached its apex in the centuries between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, while a progressive decadence began in the 17th century, when its titles were transferred. In the following centuries, it was reused for various agricultural purposes, which profoundly impacted the state of conservation of the artwork. The last phase of restorations have brought back many of the original Romanesque features.

ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The church was built of local stone in an archetypal Romanesque form. It has a single nave with a semicircular apse, datable to the 10th century, and a massive bell tower, emblems of a late-Romanesque culture, still rooted in this territory in the 13th century. The church is found at the feet of the cliff of Verrucchio, outside the town of San Martino in Rafaneto, and its use as a farm led to the insertion of the façade in a farmhouse, today uninhabited. The two major Romanesque structural elements are the nave and the campanile.

The Romanesque church of San Pietro in Messa is located in the town of Ponte Messa, a few kilometers of Penabilli, in the province of Rimini. The present structure of the temple is from the 12th century, but some documents attest to its existence already in 912. That which is certain is that the place chosen for the construction of the building corresponded to a preexisting Roman site, revealed by the ancient Roman ark, which forms the base of the altar. The site was a strategic point along the Tiberian road. It was evangelized in the 5th century and fell first into Lombard, then Franco-Carolingian hands. The church was substantially remodeled in the 12th century, almost certainly the work of Lombard workshops. The present form of the church is typical of a Po Valley Romanesque style: the gabled façade, reflecting a nave taller than the aisles. The remains of a porch are visible on the façade, above which two stone shelves project, sculpted with symbolic figures.  The rest of the façade is animated by vertical pilaster strips and horizontal stringcourses. To the side of the building is the squared bell tower, and the sober curve of the apse, articulated with lancet windows. A round arcade subdivides the bare interior. Much of the decoration was probably lost, as a result of the gradual abandon of the site. In the 16th century, the baptismal font was moved to the Collegiata of San Bartolomen in Penna, and over the course of the 18th century, the church was refitted mostly as a farmhouse. Only at the end of the last war was the old church restored and brought back to its original religious function.

The graceful church of San Giorgio is located about a kilometer from the town of Argenta, along the Strada Cardinala to Campotto and the river Reno. The church was founded in 569 by the Archbishop of Ravenna Agnello, and represents the oldest religious site of the province of Ferrara. The beautiful Ravennate altar, decorated with lambs bearing crosses and two iconostasis colonnettes, is from this early phase, as are the fragments of frescoes and mosaic pavement originally found in the apse, and today seen in the Civic Museum of Argenta. Beneath the church, the foundations of an older, perhaps Arian church have been found.
Over the course of the centuries, the building has undergone several alterations, some the result of necessary arrangements due to the unstable alluvial terrain. The present level of the church is three meters higher than it was originally. In the 12th century, the church was expanded to include aisles, terminating in a pentagonal apse. On the exterior faces of the perimeter walls, the traces of the arches that divided the nave and aisles, removed in the 16th century. Of the 12th-century additions, perhaps commissioned by the Archbishop Gualterio, fresco traces remain on the interior, as well as an elegant Romanesque marble portal, with a date of 1122 on the architrave, as well as its sculptor, Giovanni da Modigliana. The lunette is decorated with the martyrdom of Saint George. Beginning in the 13th century, the site was gradually abandoned. Today the church is found at the edge of the natural reserve of the Valleys of Campotto, part of the regional park of the Po Delta.

HISTORY
The Abbey was founded in 752 by the Benedictine abbot Anselm, former Lombard Duke of Friuli. Anselm, with the help of the local population, decided to build the church and monastery after having received the territory of Nonantola as a gift from King Astolfo, his cousin. In 756, just after its consecration by the Bishop of Reggio Emilia and of the Metropolitan of Ravenna, the abbey acquired the remains of Pope Sylvester, to whom, along with the Apostles Peter and Paul, the church is dedicated. Thanks to the favor of the Lombard sovereigns, the successive Frankish conquerors, and the strategic administration of the various abbots, the Abbey of Nonantola acquired an undisputed political prestige. Major reconstructions took place after an invasion in 889, and after an earthquake in 1117. Work began in 1121 on the Romanesque church we see today.

EXTERIOR
The exterior features of the church, fruit of the reconstruction following the 1117 earthquake, revisit those of the Cathedral of the nearby city of Modena, where work began in 1099. The gabled façade articulates the elevated height of the nave with respect to the aisles. This interior differentiation is also reflected by the two large semi-columns that articulate the three distinct sections, each defined in turn by pilaster strips and corbel tables. The portal is attributed to the same workshops of Wiligelmo that completed the first portals of the Duomo of Modena, and it repeats many of their features: a porch on two columns with foliated capitals supported by lion pedestals, with a figural portal. The jamb sculptures include the stories of Christ’s infancy on the right, and on the left, the foundation of the Abbey. In the lunette is Christ as judge between two angels and the symbols of the Evangelists.

INTERIOR
Strong quatrefoil piers divide the three-aisled space, which arrives at an elevated presbytery. The high altar is composed of the ark of Saint Sylvester, whose eight panels contain episodes from the life of the saint, completed between 1568 and 1572 by the sculptor Jacopo Silla de’ Longhi. Beneath the choir is the crypt, the oldest part of the church, preceding the twelfth-century reconstruction. The groin vaults of this vast space, equaling that of the choir above, are supported by sixty-four columns and twenty-two semi-columns. There are several original capitals from various periods. The oldest, possibly datable to the eighth century, have characteristics that define them as Lombard-Nonantolan: foliated capitals, with two or three superimposed orders, whose sculpted reliefs are strongly accentuated. The squatter and more graceful columns, decorated with palm leaves, and surmounted by abaci, are later (11th- and 12th- century). The crypt contains many relics, including those of Saint Anselm, founder of the abbey.

RESTORATIONS
It is important to point out that the present appearance of the basilica is in large part the fruit of a radical campaign of restoration carried out between 1913 and 1917, which attempted to recover the building’s old Romanesque features. During that campaign, the groin vaults of the nave were demolished, substituted with a trussed ceiling. Other significant interventions included bringing the presbytery back to its original height and freeing the crypt from its fifteenth-century interment.

HISTORY
On April 30, 1106, the relics of San Gimignano, the 4th-century Bishop and patron of Modena, were translated to the crypt of the new city Cathedral, dedicated to the Coronation of the Virgin. On October 7 of the same year, Pope Pasqual II arrived in the city to bless the saint’s remains and to consecrate the altar. The ceremony was attended by Countess Matilda of Canossa, the Bishop, nobles, and members of the middle class, in other words, the whole city assembly, which had unanimously agreed to the construction of the building, substituting the earlier Duomo, whose structural instability posed a serious danger. The first stone of the new temple was laid on June 9, 1099, a date we know from an inscription held by two sculpted figures: the patriarch Enoch and the prophet Elijah. The couplet concluding the inscription contains a eulogy to the façade’s sculptor, Wiligelmo. A second inscription, on the outside the main apse, records the architect, Lanfranco. Notwithstanding the first prolific phases of construction, the building was not completed for a few more decades. Another inscription on the south side, commemorates the consecration ceremony of July 12, 1184 by Pope Lucius III. The last stages of labor were carried out by new workshops from Campione, which took over for the Comacine masters led by Lanfranco starting in the mid-12th century.

EXTERIOR
Two powerful buttresses break up the façade into three parts, corresponding to the three aisles inside. The slopes of the façade cable also suggest the lower height of the aisles with respect to the nave. A portal corresponds to each aisle, the central of which contains a monumental porch, surmounted by a loggia. The column-bearing lions are from the 1st century C.E., representing a classic example of the reuse of ancient material within medieval workshops. Among the most important sculptural work of the façade are Wiligelmo’s reliefs from the Book of Genesis. The scenes include the Creation of the world, the Creation of Adam and Original sin; the expulsion from the Garden, condemnation to work; Cain and Abel’s sacrifices, the murder of Abel, Lamech killing Cain, and the Flood.