In the countryside near Monticchiello, in the commune of Pienza, the pieve of Santa Maria dello Spino holds a service just once a year, on the feast of Corpus Domini. The rest of the time it is a silent presence in the Val d'Orcia landscape, recognisable by its sandstone facade and the small bell gable rising above the fields.
Its history can be read in documents and on a stone. The church belonged to the diocese of Chiusi until 1462, when Pius II created the diocese of Pienza. By 1500 the building was close to collapse, and in 1570 it was rebuilt by the Saracini family — a fact still recorded by the plaque set into the facade.
What to see
The exterior is rigorously plain: the sandstone front, the bell gable and the sixteenth-century Saracini plaque, which is the first thing to look for since it is the document that dates the rebuilding. Inside there is a single nave with one altar in Baroque forms, evidence of restorations probably carried out in the eighteenth century — just two legible centuries of alterations, for a building that never needed to be grander than the farmland around it.
Visiting
Your chance of finding the church open is the feast of Corpus Domini, a movable date falling between late May and June: it is the one day of the year when the building returns to use. Otherwise you will have to settle for the exterior, though its position among the fields near Monticchiello still rewards the short detour from the area's main roads.
Our editors' tip
Pair the pieve with Monticchiello, the walled village a few minutes away, home of the Teatro Povero: since 1967 the community has staged a play each summer written and performed by the villagers themselves. A church that lives one day a year and a village that tells its own story on stage are two faces of the same Val d'Orcia — the one made of small, stubborn communities. And if you want to see the interior, put Corpus Domini in your diary: a fixed appointment, tied each year to the date of Easter.