Santa Maria della Pieve is the main and most beautiful Romanesque church of Arezzo's area, and sure the most picturesque of the city. Its construction began in 1140 on a previous temple dated back to the year 1000, and went on until the first decades of the XIV century. Its bell tower of the fourteenth century, with double windows, is said 'delle cento buche' (tower of the hundred holes) and it is the symbol of Arezzo. Outside the church is majestic, with a Romanesque façade, on which there are a central portal and two lateral ones, all decorated in the lintel with beautiful bas-reliefs. Inside the transept is in front of the presbitery with pillars. The addition of chapels, edicules and frescoes took taken place in the 1300's. Over the high altar there is the refined polyptych with Our Lady with the Child and Saint John the Evangelist, Donato, John the Baptist and Matthew, commissioned to Pietro Lorenzetti in 1320.
The church's most striking feature is its façade, with a a five-arches lower floor surmounted by three loggias, with the number of columns increasing with the elevation. The columns, and its capitals, are each different from the other (one is a statue).