Church of San Pietro in Oliveto

This small monument of the Lake Garda area is situated on the road leading from Limone del Garda to Voltino di Tremosine, a couple of kilometres from the centre, among the olive trees on the hillside. The church of S. Pietro in Oliveto is mentioned for the first time, among the chapels dependent on the pieve of Tremosine, in the bull of Pope Urban III of the year 1187. In 1532 the Catholic lakeside community of Limone separated from Tremosine to become an independent parish, with its own new church building, leaving the small country chapel under the jurisdiction of the pieve church of Tremosine at least until 1578. In 1580, during a pastoral visit, the prelate Carlo Borromeo described the religious complex of S. Pietro as “ecclesia campestri set vetus”. Over the years, and because of its very remote location with respect to the inhabited centres of Tremosine and Limone, the church progressively lost its functions as a primary religious centre, suffering from occasional attendance and partial abandonment, even though, in the course of the post-medieval centuries, the building was not without maintenance and restoration work. The small church can generally be visited only from the outside. The interior can be entered only on rare and special occasions. The overall impression today is that of standing before an architectural complex of modest size and rustic workmanship, set among the olive trees, formed by the church, with a single-nave plan and a deep square apse, to which, according to scholars, were added in various historical periods (in any case a sign of continuity in the use of the site) the truncated bell tower on the north side (generically ascribed to the post-Romanesque period, 13th century), the sacristy, at the junction between the nave and the apse (dated to the 14th century), and the portico, which would seem to be the most recent construction, of the 16th–17th century, as well as the rebuilding of the roofing with vaults, which entailed the raising of the whole church building. The walls are entirely covered with recently applied plaster. The west façade is simply gabled, with a rebuilt portal surmounted by a large rectangular window, also post-medieval work (see photo of façade) . Although there is no lack of studies and surveys by contemporary scholars, it remains a difficult task to find in the present architectural arrangement a starting point for dating this small religious complex with certainty. There are, however, several clues, supported also by recent archaeological investigations, which take the origins of this church back to the early Middle Ages; above all some sculptural finds, most of which, unfortunately, have been lost (only a few photographs from the first decades of the 20th century remain), such as the remains of two plutei and the pierced stone screens which, at the beginning of the 20th century, were still set in the two windows of the south side wall, or which are still visible, such as the holy-water stoup set into the wall inside the building, also on the south wall, and the make-up of the roof, which still has flat tiles of the Roman period in place. The church is the oldest part of the religious complex of S. Pietro and, even though plaster covers almost all the masonry, a closer examination allows at least two different building phases to be identified, which can best be seen on the north wall left uncovered by the addition of the bell tower and the sacristy, and in the stretch of the quadrangular apse, again on the north wall. In these stretches of outer wall, the oldest part (corresponding to the lower sections of masonry) is built of small pebbles laid rather haphazardly in abundant mortar, then covered by an irregular lime plaster applied with a trowel. At a certain height, the masonry shows constructional inconsistencies: the plaster follows what must have been the pitch of the roof, at a lower level than the present one. The same building features are also found in the masonry of the apse, with the raised part projecting beyond the lower parts. Scholars attribute this difference in level to work carried out in the late Middle Ages, when the roofing was rebuilt, replacing the original one with vaults (inside, the arches of the vaults spring directly from the side walls, overlapping the frescoes). This work probably also altered the openings; the single-light window, now walled up, in the centre of the apse could be original: its outline can be made out only with difficulty, because of the heavy plastering that covers almost all the exterior parts of the building, but it can still be identified to the left of the remains of the fresco of St. Christopher, with one edge, the right-hand one, that retains remains of fresco towards the splay. Inside, in the centre of the apse, on the other hand, the recent masonry that has blocked the window is very evident (the Renaissance fresco of the Crucifixion still respected its outline: the different measurements, larger inside than outside, indicate the width and depth of the splay). As already observed on the outside, inside too there are remains of another opening, which from the south side of the apse gave onto the area of the portico, located below the present window; this too was probably one of the old openings. The two windows that now open in the south side wall of the nave, according to scholars, lack the old pierced stone decoration. In practice, the late-medieval church was grafted onto the outer walls of a pre-existing building, whose lower parts were reused, while the upper parts were entirely rebuilt. To better understand and interpret the architecture of these small secondary buildings of such ancient origin, the analysis of art historians is needed; they establish, above all on the strength of the sculptural remains that have survived, such as the holy-water stoup (see photo of holy-water stoup) , or that have been lost, such as the fragments of pluteus, but also from the ground plan of the church of S. Pietro in Uliveto (see photo of plan) , an early-medieval date ranging between the 9th and 10th centuries; the church, consisting of a building with a single-nave plan and a rectangular apse, recalls plans still in use in the 7th century and found in the Alpine and pre-Alpine area, such as S. Pietro at Stabio (with a 7th-century burial), S. Martino at Trezzo d’Adda (also a 7th-century foundation), and others, again in the Lombard area, as well as 8th- and 9th-century models such as the church of S. Maria alla Novalesa or, closer by, the church of S. Eufemia di Nigoline at Cortefranca (BS). The portico (see photo of portico) , open on three sides, with large mushroom-shaped arches to the east and south, has partly plastered walls, on which various curious inscriptions are preserved, incised between the 16th and 18th centuries and referring to famines or local events, and for this reason very interesting from an anthropological point of view (on this subject see the research of Prof. Fava). (Note: in the south side wall of the apse there was an opening, now walled up, which gave directly onto the portico, beneath the remains of a large arch, set lower than the present roof covering the portico). Preliminary archaeological report At the beginning of July 2004, in order to remedy the damp infiltration that was damaging some structures of the building, the floor laid in 1920 was removed. Just below it a mortar floor was found, probably of the 9th century. This level is incomplete and has been cut by two pits dug near the presbytery (the purpose of these excavations is still unknown). Just before the presbytery area, this mortar surface has a small channel, into which a chancel screen was probably fitted. It was found that the outer walls do not have deep foundations, from which it may be deduced that S. Pietro could have been a church of the so-called semi-underground type. Inside, on the north wall, there is a depiction of a Last Supper (see photo of fresco) , a fresco of the 14th century. In the apse area, under the altar, a monolithic stone of the Roman period was found which served as the base of a wine press. The start of the excavation made it possible to recover many pottery fragments (still to be dated) and a piece of a small column with its base. Outside, a large part of the churchyard was used as a burial ground, given the abundant bone remains found a few centimetres below the present ground level. An interesting detail is offered by the stretch of wall outside the church building and aligned with the south side of the portico, which, by its building technique, the arrangement and cutting of the stones and the type of mortar, indicates a medieval date of the Romanesque period (a couple of metres high, decreasing to just under a metre), along which the remains of an entrance or window are preserved, with a sill about one metre above the present ground level.