Saint John the Baptist church, Church ruin in Riva del Garda, Italy.

Saint John the Baptist church is a ruined structure on a hiking trail with views over Lake Garda in the northern Italian landscape. The crumbling building sits on elevated ground and offers wide views across mountains and water from its location.

The building began as a watchtower guarding the road of the Pinza, the old route from Riva up Monte Rocchetta to the Ledro valley and Lombardy. It was converted into a church by breaking a wall to add an apse, and is already cited as a church in Riva's statutes of 1274. In the 15th century Niccolò Piccinino built a small fort beside it, now vanished; French troops of Vendôme damaged it in 1703.

The building served as a boundary marker: Riva's statutes already named it before 1274 as the limit beyond which wood gathering was forbidden, a ban kept for centuries. Later documents often used it to mark territory, and a Good Friday procession came once a year.

The ruin stands along the strada della Pinza, the old road climbing Monte Rocchetta from Riva del Garda toward the Ledro valley. The route is on foot; the building is a roofless shell, so the visit is outdoors and brief. The site was cleared and consolidated in the 1990s but by 2012 had again fallen into neglect, so expect overgrown ground.

The building began as a watchtower guarding the road of the Pinza, the old route from Riva up Monte Rocchetta toward Val di Ledro and Lombardy; archaeological digs inside have turned up finds from many different periods. One wall was broken through to add the apse when it became a church.