The Pieve (parish) of Finale, a paleochristian and early-medieval monument, has been quite recently discovered during the excavations which took place between 1940 and 1945.
It is located exactly below the existing Church of the Capuchins and marks the place ad fines where, in ancient times, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood gathered in order to organise themselves as a community. Consecrated to St. John the Baptist, it was Finale’s baptismal church for about ten centuries before the bigger Collegiate Church was built. Today the Pieve is a wide absidal hall built directly over Roman-imperial layers (1st to 4th centuries).
Some research suggests that the former church could have been built on a Roman urban area, probably belonging to the Pollupices pagus (village). The excavations of the Pieve brought back to light the brick altar, the “confession” for the Martyrs’ relics, the remains of the “schola cantorum”, the baptismal font, an inscription on a tombstone (Paula’s epigraph) with the probable founding date of the church (517 A.D.), two brick tombs of the 4th and 5th century and the pillars of the two aisles, built later (7th or 8th century).
Other changes were introduced around the 12th-13th centuries; the final ones, which transformed the inside of the church in the Baroque fashion, date back to 17th century.