Located at the western end of Pienza, the church of Santa Caterina was built in the late 17th century, opened for worship in 1722, and consecrated in 1731. It belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza.
What to see
The exterior features a simple brick façade with a central portal flanked by two small windows, topped by a semicircular window. Inside, the single-nave layout contains two lateral stucco altars with 17th-century paintings. The Baroque high altar houses a venerated image of the Virgin and Child: a 14th-century Sienese school fresco fragment, likely from a roadside tabernacle, framed inside a 17th-century Sienese school canvas. On the choir loft against the entrance wall stands a fully mechanical pipe organ built in 1961 by the Verschueren company for the Nederlandsche Protestanten Bond Kerk in Velp, Netherlands, and relocated here in 2018. It features 9 registers on a single manual and a pedalboard without independent registers.
Visiting
The single-nave interior allows visitors to inspect the 17th-century stucco work on the side altars, the composite artwork on the high altar, and the 20th-century Dutch organ above the doorway.
Our editors' tip
Look closely at the high altar to see how the 14th-century Sienese fresco detail was physically integrated into a 17th-century canvas to preserve the venerated figure within a new Baroque setting.