Chiesa di San Martino

The Church of San Martino is located in the village of La Sassa, in the municipality of Montecatini Val di Cecina, and is a medieval place of worship that preserves centuries of the area’s religious and social history. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century records it appears as dedicated to Saint Nicholas and as a dependent church of the pieve of Saints John the Baptist and Quiricus, located near Caselle in the open countryside, on a small hill now known as Podere La Pieve. The dedication to Saint Martin of Tours dates to 1361, when the church was elevated to the status of pieve, later than many other centres in the Volterra area.

The building has undergone several renovations over the centuries: the first major intervention took place in the late fifteenth century, when the church was almost entirely rebuilt after the castle had been abandoned for about forty years and the Romanesque structures had collapsed; the second and most substantial reform dates to the middle decades of the nineteenth century and gave the church its current appearance, with a very unusual orientation the altar facing south and the entrance facing north. Notable features inside include a sixteenth-century baptismal font in red marble from Castagneto Carducci, with a column decorated by scrolls and volutes, and a hand-carved and gilded wooden throne once used for the procession in honour of the Madonna of the Rosary.