The Romanesque church of Santa Maria della Pieve is older than the rest of central Arezzo's monuments, with a facade of arcaded galleries in the Pisan-Romanesque style that dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. The blind arcading on the facade is decorated with carved figures — animals, human heads, and foliage — worn by seven centuries of Tuscan weather.
Inside, the atmosphere is dark and ancient, a deliberate contrast to the bright stone exterior. Pietro Lorenzetti's polyptych of the Madonna and Saints (1320) sits behind the high altar. The church faces onto the Corso Italia (the main shopping street) rather than the Piazza Grande, though the two are directly connected. Free to enter.