Sanctuary Madonna di San Martino

Sanctuary Madonna di San Martino, built in the seventeenth century for the apparition of the Madonna who gave birth to the devotion to the Blessed Virgin of San Martino; so they began to build a new sanctuary, suspended from the plague of 1630 but then resumed and completed.

The Church of San Martino is the original one of the area and is located in front of the sanctuary, datable to the VII-VIII century, now it is part of the homonymous farmhouse. An archaeological survey of the Archaeological Superintendence of Lombardy showed that in the first phase it was a funeral oratory (VII-VIII secolo): a modest church building with a single apsed hall and paving in small pebbles, the church externally had cemetery functions. In the second phase (late 8th-9th century), a single-chamber church was built with three apses three times larger than the previous one; the archaeological evidence and the historical situation have allowed G.P.Brogiolo to hypothetically identify the small house of S. Martino with the curtem Lionam, dependent on a monastery of Tours and mentioned in a privilege of Carlo the Grosso. In the third phase (thirteenth century) as opposed to other churches, it is rebuilt in reduced forms using, in place of the square segments, simple morainic pebbles; it has a single nave, with two atypical single-light windows. It is inevitable to link this reduction in the quality of the architecture to a reorganization of the functions, which a bull of Pope Lucius III of 1184 allows to bring back to the dependence of the archpriest of Lonato.