Chiesa della Madonna della neve

The church is nothing but the beauty is that below an underground channel flows into the fishpond.

This small church in Santa Fiora is interesting, as it flows an underground but visible stream.

The church is also known as "della Piscina" due to its proximity to the Peschiera complex, where the Fiora waters are collected. The archaeological excavations carried out for the reconstruction of the pavement, and still admirable through the large crystals of the floor, show the place before the construction of the church. In the fourteenth century, a paved road passed here, overlooked by small buildings built around the Peschiera, probably to house workshops for artisans who needed water. A stream crossed the road, which crossed it by means of a small bridge of which one of the load-bearing walls remains visible. When the church was built in the 15th century, the stream was channeled into a large stone conduit that flowed into the Peschiera. More or less in the same years the inhabitants of the nearby districts of Monte Catino and Borgo began to testify that a small image of the Madonna, painted in a tabernacle (which must have been on the side of the paved road, perhaps where today is the high altar) he was working graces and miracles. For this reason the citizens, the Sforza family, the Augustinian friars of the nearby convent and the bishop of Chiusi, promoted and carried out the construction of the church in its present form. The façade is decorated with a fine relief from the Della Robbia school with the Saints Flora and Lucilla, from the 15th century. Inside, a cycle of frescoes with figures of saints including, in the presbytery, a small cycle of Augustinian saints (San Nicola da Tolentino, Sant'Agostino, Santa Monica and San Guglielmo di Malavalle) painted by Francesco Nasini (1640).

Very particular church near the fishpond ... worth a visit ... at the foot you can see the source of the river fiora ...

A truly singular church, the excavations carried out in 2001 brought to light a fourteenth-century paved road flanked by buildings and crossed by a canal that still flows into the Peschiera today.

The Renaissance church next to the S. Fiora fishpond is very particular, with a gabled façade and a small Della Robbia shrine between the portal and the rose window. The interior, with a nave, is bright and rather bare, but through special glass plates on the floor you can see the results of the 2001 archaeological excavations which uncovered, underneath, a 14th-century paved road with remains of buildings, crossed by a stream that enters the fishpond. Seeing the water flowing under the church is extraordinarily impressive.