Church of the Madonna Above the Gate

This church was built in the 18th century to house a painting of the Immaculate Conception. The reason at the time was the memory of the opening of the city gate by a miracle.

Suvereto is a charming village of medieval origin, still surrounded by walls, not far from other attractions in the area such as the Etruscan city of Populonia. We are in the south-east of the province of Livorno, in the heart of the Val di Cornia. A town with a particularly mild climate, Suvereto is located on the gentle slopes that rise from the valley of the Cornia river towards the Colline Metallifere; from these first hills you can see the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Gulf of Follonica and the island of Elba, while behind it wind roads and paths towards the cities of Massa Marittima and Volterra. The territory of Suvereto is rich in cork oaks, centuries-old olive trees and vines, and reflects the characteristics of the local economy, traditionally based on agriculture, forestry and livestock farming; However, today Suvereto also has a good income from tourism, thanks to its beautiful surrounding landscape, with an exclusive imprint: cork, which here they call more sweetly suvero, which is at the origin of the name of the town and is even depicted in the municipal coat of arms.
The parish church of Suvereto is dedicated to San Giusto, bishop of Volterra. Of very ancient origin, its completion took place in 1189. The building has a Latin cross plan with a single nave, and on the gabled façade there is a rose window and the Romanesque portal, delimited by two niches surmounted by brackets, on which is placed an architrave decorated with a vine shoot coming out of the mouth of a central figure. Inside the building it is possible to admire an octagonal baptismal font in chiselled stone made in the 12th century, and a pipe organ dated 1718 made by Domenico Francesco Mazzoni. On the left side of the church, not perfectly aligned with the facade, stands the rectangular bell tower, which was damaged by lightning and restored by local craftsmen in 1884, modifying the original appearance by eliminating the most typical aspects of Tuscan Romanesque.