In the area next to the south side of the church and in front of the façade an archaeological investigation was undertaken prior to the beginning of consolidation work. The trenches along the south side identified, between the sacristy and bell tower, a stretch of the Romanesque church’s perimeter wall built in regular courses of squared stone blocks. This belongs to the earliest known phase of the building, of which the semicircular apse in grey stone ashlar masonry with pilasters, small suspended arches and a splayed single lancet window survives intact (first half of the 12th century?). Also identified were: a) post 16th century walls holding up an embankment (perhaps formed by deposits from the repeated flooding of the torrent which runs above the village); b) several ossuaries, up against the walls of the church and bell tower dating from the end of the 16th century onwards; c) a square room originally covered by a vault and linked to the church via an opening in the north wall, blocked in more recent times. The interior was filled with a large quantity of bones and the collapse of the vault. It was probably a side chapel built during the last enlargement of the church (end 16th-17th century) that was then used as an ossuary. The final trench in front of the façade revealed a series of burials within stone slab coffins, on an E-W alignment and datable to a phase that is no later than the end of the 13th century. (Salvatore Lentini, Serena Solano)