Church of San Martino a Luco

Situated close to Strozzavolpe’s castle, about 3 km away from Poggibonsi’s city centre, it’s a small Romanic church with just one aisle which still preserves the walls in tuff and travertine and it has been recently restored.
It’s mentioned, for the first time, in a document of 983 and appears again, in 998, among the goods donated by the marquis Ugo of Tuscany to the Badia of Marturi.
The facade is gabled with a mullionade window and a central column, probably restored in the ninteenth century, and a portal with six steps, rebuilt in 1827, and decorated with an architrave and an arc in Pisan style, datable to the end of the twelfth century.
To enlight its internal part there are three single lancet windows with a monolithic arc double splayed, visible on the right side of the church, just below the roof’s eave.
The tower bell, built in 1904, is situated next to the sacristy, behind the apse and it has been equipped with bells between 1910 and 1912.
The church is a single room, with a terracotta floor and wooden trusses while the presbytety is defined by two steps, which lead to a main altar, built in stones in 2004.
The wooden choir of the eighteenth century follows the curves of the apse’s niche, curvilinear, with a wall tabernacle collocated on the left side, which hosts a big arch decorared by a  reworked painting of the Florentine school, dated back to the fifteenth century, and representing the Madonna con Bambino in trono tra Sant’Ambrogio, Santa Monica e angeli and Dio Padre benedicente tra due angeli. Above the arch, inside a wall chalk frame, there’s a painting in oil on canvas, dated back to the eighteenth century, which reproduces the Madonna con Bambino fra Sant’Antonio abate e Santa Caterina d’Alessandria.

Loc. Luco