• Introduction
• The village
• The church

The Church of San Biagio

The church

The village square

Sunset over the church

Concert in the church square

Pari's two main roads meet at the Piazza della Chiesa where the parish church is located.

Nothing remains of the original medieval church but we do know that the people of Pari petitioned Pope Pius II, while he was staying at Bagni di Petriolo in 1460, about the state of the building. Their request was successful and in 1466 the church was totally restored.

The first parish priest to be elected by the community of Pari was Ser Bartolomeo di Mariano d'Antonio da Pari in 1497.

In 1850 the church was again totally restored and the rear was increased in size. The bell tower dates from the seventeenth century. This nineteenth-century restoration was carried out at the expense of the pre-Romanesque church of San Giorgio in Valoria, located outside Pari, which had already been abandoned and was partly in ruins. Stones from the church were therefore used in the restoration of San Biagio, with the exception of those stones carved with figures of goats, flowers and birth. These, not considered to be fitting for a church, were cemented into the walls of private houses where they can clearly be seen today.

The interior of the church is very simple, having a single nave. It contains a number of paintings. On the left is a Madonna and Child with Saints in the style of Andrea del Sarto, after the original which hangs in the Prado, Madrid. On the right is a painting on wood by a follower of Domenico Beccafumi showing the Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and John the Baptist.

Of particular interest is a silver ciborium from the seventeenth or eighteenth century embossed with the figure of the risen Christ, and a holy water font from 1644.

On the right hand side is the little Oratorio of the Holy Cross dedicated to Saints Fabiano and Sebastiano. This was totally reconstructed in 1597 and has been restored several times since.