The Church of Santo Stefano or rather Byzantine at the foot of Anghiari
Inside a small courtyard embraced by a green field, the church of Santo Stefano in Anghiari is one of the oldest of the Valtiberina (valley), dated back to between the 7th and 8th centuries. The Byzantinnial parellels are tied to the possession by the Bishops Residence of Città di Castello, at that time a dependence of Ravenna. On the other side, in that period, the Valtiberina was a natural corridor connecting Rome and Ravenna.
The little church of Anghiari, whose name also appears in an epigraph conserved in the Abbazia of Pomposa, in reality represents a rather recent discovery. It was the study done by Professor Giuseppe Nomi which sparked interest in the history and arts expert Professor Mario Salmi and the Supervisors of the Well Being of Artistic Works. From a wall of the colonnial house that surrounded the ancient structure of the Church, in fact, immerged an ionic capital of Roman Epoch.
Subsequent scholars evidence the presence of another similar capital, the origial plan of the Church, that thanks to the escavations that followed appeared little by little, together with other tombs. Other particulars, besides the capitals already stated and the relative pillars, were assumed to have been built, which often happened in and around a Roman Temple.
The work done in the late 1960's restituted, at least in part, the antique form of the Church of Santo Stefano, with wall structures in brick (typical of ruined monuments) and the main body in a square plan adorned by three semicircular apses (a symbol of the Divine Trinity).
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