Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Romano

The Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Romano, in the municipality of Montopoli Val d'Arno, also includes a museum. The Antiquarium conserves altar cards, crosses, chalices, 18th-century blueprints, documents about the history of the sanctuary, many tablets and priceless votive objects, as well as a confessional from 1730 by Fra Desiderio da Firenze. It developed out of the Church of Santa Maria a Valiana, which conserved an image of the Virgin Mary carved into the trunk of an oak tree and which became an object of increasing veneration starting in the 1500s.

In 1515, the church was enlarged to adapt it to the new needs for worship. The building vaunts a single nave with chapels on the sides. The apse and ceiling, destroyed during the war, are modern. The Chapel of the Madonna as we see it today dates to changes made in the early 1800s by Pasquale Poccianti. The sober Neoclassical layout stands out for the elegance of the ornate, white stucco decorations by Emilio Santarelli. At the centre, there is a small temple by Amalia Dupré that contains a sacred image of the Madonna di San Romano.