In the upper part of the town next to the Fortebracci fortress tower, stands the church of St Maria Assunta. Its appearance today is the result of expansion works carried out in the 1600s on the ruins of an earlier small church built around 1317.
The first church was dedicated to S. Maria Assunta (St Mary risen to heaven) and it had no apse or lateral chapels. In the 1600s, for the people’s convenience, the old St Gregory’s church outside the city walls was replaced by the little church in town, thereafter becoming the main parish church with the privilege of becoming the Bishop’s Seat and Collegiate of Clergymen. From then on, the church has been known as St Gregory’s Church and Collegiate (Chiesa di S. Gregorio e Collegiate).
The church has one main aisle with a semicircular apse in a Latin cross layout. Inside are valuable frescoes, paintings and works of art.
Between the wooden coffered ceiling and frame, above the entire aisle, are frescoes depicting scenes from the life of the Madonna from her birth to the visit from Elizabeth, attributed to painters of the Florentine Academy. The side chapels are richly decorated, the most important one being the one called Cappella delle Suore (the nuns’ chapel) to the left of the apse, so called because it is adjacent to the convent of the Poor Clares (Clarisse order), guardians of the Sacred Thorn (Sacra Spina). According to tradition, Carlo, a son of the Fortebracci, gave the religious relic (a thorn from Jesus’ crown of thorns) to the people of Montone after it was given to him by the Venetians in gratitude for his helping them defeat the Turks. In the same chapel on the wooden gold-painted altar, is the Pazzaglia family crest, one of whose members, Father Giovanni Pazzaglia, of the Filipino Order, promoted and financed the expansion works of the church in the 1700s.