26 - Pieve di San Giovanni
In the middle of a street with heavy traffic, between new houses and the supermarket, the witness of a beautiful parish church remains isolated and today only a few is visible. The parish church of San Giovanni Battista located to the north of the historic center, the present via Donizzetti, hosted the baptismal font and it was the mother church of the community, because a lot of other churches depended on it. It dates back to the 13th century. Probably the first settlement of Fermignano aroused around it. T
he building, probably of small dimensions, it was a single nave one; the presbytery area had to be slightly raised and surrounded by a simple balustrade consisting of cylindrical pillars made of local stone. Also the baptismal font was made of local stone, closed by two doors of fir wood. Externally the church had two entrances: the main and the gothic one, with diamond pointed capitals and a service entrance, probably opposite to the first.
The parish church lost its importance during the eighteenth century, mostly after the earthquake in 1781 that damaged its structure. The building materials were reused for the restorations of the new parish Church of Santa Veneranda, already existing since the mid-16th century, where the baptismal font was moved to. The church was definitely deconsecrated in 1812.
The beautiful fourteenth century door can still be admired today, inside the church. It is made of a local stone of the Cesana and it is pointed arch and decorated with diamond pointed capitals. An unsuccessful intervention has covered the structure making impossible to see what’s left, but a present work of restoration is now recovering what this great monument could still witness, the most ancient of Fermignano.