| The monument has close links with the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A diploma of Pope Honorius III of 1128 lists it among the properties of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, the famous monastic order of Jerusalem. Originally accompanied by a pilgrims’ hostel (no longer present), the church is built to a circular plan, so as to create a scale reproduction of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the sanctuary built by Constantine that represented the heart of medieval Christianity. Together with the other oriental references seen in the architecture along the arterial roads of western Europe, it provided both a foretaste of the joys that awaited the pilgrims and a “mental pilgrimage” for those who were unable to travel.
The effect of the large blocks of carparo stone used in the outer walls is mitigated by the fine marble portal on the northern side (early 12th century), which is an avant-corps with an architrave, a cornice, columns with figurative capitals and lions at the base, and reliefs of humans and mythical animals.
Inside, the surviving frescoes (13th to 14th centuries) include a Deposition of Christ, a Madonna with Child and the typical iconography of St. George and the dragon, a direct allusion to the crusades.
Outside, near the West portal, a mass of incisions does not completely obscure the image of a boat with sails and oars. The animal-like figurehead recalls the Drekars, the formidable Viking “dragon ships” that were still in use in the early Norman period. The regional ports were the embarkation point for those heading to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the carved sailing ship, an expression of the spontaneous and popular religiosity of the pilgrims in transit, clearly alludes to the crux transmarina.
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