Built on the landslide deposit of Monte Conero above and built almost entirely from small local limestone blocks, the small abbey church of Santa Maria di Portonovo represents an exclusive example of the most original of the Romanesque art of the Marche region. system, which a now dispersed parchment ascribed between 1034 and 1050, the subsequent events of the important Benedictine complex are well documented: the papal and imperial privileges granted between the 12th and 13th centuries; the abandonment by the religious due to a landslide in 1320; the raids of the Turks in the 16th century; the damage caused in 1808 by the Napoleonic troops; the first substantial structural consolidation intervention by Sacconi in 1894. From the iconographic point of view, S. Maria di Portonovo is a basilica church which, on a model of oriental derivation, due to the presence of the two side chapels takes the shape of a cross Greek. The plan is divided into three naves which are flanked by two side aisles, shorter, concluded by semicircular apses as well as the main nave. The roof is barrel-shaped in the main nave - interrupted in the center by an elliptical dome supported by four cruciform pillars - and cross-shaped in the side aisles. Pilasters and hanging arches emphasize the external walls, while the interior is devoid of decorations.