Pieve di San Giorgio di Valpolicella, Romanesque church in San Giorgio di Valpolicella, Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella, Italy

The Pieve di San Giorgio di Valpolicella is a Romanesque church in San Giorgio di Valpolicella, a hamlet of Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella. Its facade of rough pale grey and beige stone blocks has a projecting rounded section with a tall arched doorway framed in pinkish stone; a square stone bell tower with a clock face rises to the right. Inside, a long nave under a dark wooden truss roof is flanked by rounded arches on both sides, with a stone altar beneath a rounded apse arch.

Excavations east of the church between 1985 and 1989 found a Bronze Age rectangular hut and Iron Age structures of the Rhaetian-house type, cut into the rock with pink limestone slabs. The site was a religious centre of the Arusnates, whose inscriptions name deities such as Lualda, Cuslanus and Sol and Luna. A Lombard phase is attested by the ciborium columns inscribed with King Liutprand (712-744); the church was largely rebuilt around the 11th century, after the 1117 earthquake, and a papal bull of Eugene III of 1145 first names it a pieve.

The name "Ingannapoltron" ("trick the lazy") refers to the climb pilgrims faced to reach the hilltop church. The parish was a collegiate church whose canons ran a schola iuniorum, teaching Latin grammar to local boys from whom new clerics were chosen. The early 12th-century baptismal font stands on the left side of the building.

Visitors can explore the eastern cloister with its three original colonnades and central well, plus an archaeological museum designed by Libero Cecchini. The hilltop location offers wide views across the surrounding region as you walk through the complex.

In the right nave, beneath one of the columns, stands an altar to Sol and Luna, set up by the priest Quintus Sertorius Festus. The sources note that only the Arusnates seem to have worshipped these two deities together, likely asking them for the prosperity of the fields.