Sant'Ellero, Romanesque church in Galeata, Italy

Sant'Ellero is a Romanesque abbey on a hilltop above Galeata. Its church has a gabled sandstone facade with a cylindrical oculus in the tympanum, not a rose window. The main portal is recessed and rests on old carved capitals: two double-tailed sirens on the right, two sword-bearing monk-knights on the left. The apse is unusually square.

Construction of the abbey began in 497. It grew into a nullius, a quasi-diocese governing about forty parishes between Romagna and Tuscany, and stayed exempt from episcopal jurisdiction until 1785, when Pius VI, at the request of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, joined it to the Diocese of Sansepolcro. Its territory passed to the Diocese of Forlì in 1975.

The church draws pilgrims who come to venerate the remains of Sant'Ellero housed in the crypt below. The decorated sarcophagus with its carved crosses reflects the lasting devotion to this religious figure within the local community.

The abbey stands on the hilltop above Galeata, about 3 km from the town. One access road is lined with the mid-19th-century Via Crucis chapels and a small Byzantine-style column at the spot of the legendary meeting between the saint and Theodoric. The climb is on foot along these ways.

In the crypt, behind the 8th-century Greek marble sarcophagus carved with crosses, leaves and flowers, a cell about one metre wide is cut into the rock, covered by a vault with a 25 cm hole. Tradition has pilgrims place their head in the hole while seated on a stone seat to ward off backache and headache.