Before Pope Pius II turned his native Corsignano into the Renaissance showpiece of Pienza, the community's mother church already stood just outside the village: the pieve of Santi Vito e Modesto, a Romanesque building dating largely from the twelfth century. At its plain baptismal font two future popes were baptized — Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pius II, and his nephew, the future Pius III.
The cylindrical bell tower is older still: it dates from the eleventh century, shows the influence of Ravenna, and is the first thing you recognise as you approach.
What to see
The facade concentrates the church's carved decoration: a slightly projecting portal with two small columns in its splay, carrying a zigzag-patterned arch that encloses a second one with plant motifs; above it opens a two-light window whose central support is a female figure, crowned by a crutch-shaped capital. On the right flank is a second portal, plainer in build but densely carved: its lintel shows the Journey of the Magi and the Nativity.
Inside are three naves separated by quadrangular pillars — the arcades on the right belong to a later phase — and the east end has lost its apses; beneath the right nave survives a small apsed crypt.
Visiting
The pieve is an easy downhill walk from the centre of Pienza, just outside the town gate. One thing to know before you enter: the rustic look, especially inside, is not the result of nine untouched centuries but of a restoration carried out in 1925, which stripped the building back to this bare stone.
Our editors' tip
Give a few extra minutes to the lintel of the side portal, where the procession of the Magi and the Nativity read like a story carved in stone, and to the female figure of the two-light window, an invention you will not forget. Then walk back to piazza Pio II with one thought in mind: the pope who built the "ideal city" was baptized right here, at this unadorned font. The quarter-hour walk between the pieve and the square measures exactly the distance between rural medieval Corsignano and Renaissance Pienza.