The Pieve di Iggio is located on a narrow plateau in the high valley furrowed by the river Stirone. The first written evidence of the parish church dates back to 1040 but the previous dedication to the Bishop of Tours, a saint strongly venerated in the Lombard era, suggests that its origins are older. The territory in which it is located was once crossed by a route that connected the road from Fidenza to Varsi, Bardi and Berceto with the Via Francigena.
Outside it has a gabled façade in neoclassical style characterized by the presence of two pairs of pilasters. In the door jambs of the portal there are sculpted stone drafts, which came to light during the restoration of 1924, representing a mocking bird (probably a dove) and a corner stone decorated with stylized flowers flanked by a small asyline cross and a figure in prayerful attitude.
On the western side there is a small portal, splayed and tripartite, decorated in the arch with scales and lozenges motifs, which has a frieze in which leaf decorations, four-petal rosettes, stylized trees and a chalice, engraved on local stone with a dry and clean carving.
These magnificent ornamental motifs should date back to 1200 and also belong to the Templar iconography; for this reason some scholars believe that the church may have belonged in the first centuries of its existence to the knights of the medieval order, which makes the mysterious history of this place even more fascinating.
The interior of the church is in the shape of a Greek cross, supported by pillars at the corners and preserves a stone baptismal font, a memory of the primitive baptismal function.
Today the church is dedicated to St. Martin the Bishop.
43047 Iggio
