In 831, some Venetian merchants arrived near Cropani on their way back from Alexandria where they had collected the remains of the Evangelist Mark. According to this reconstruction, the ship was caught in a bad storm and wrecked near the beach of Cropani. The inhabitants aided the merchants who, as a sign of recognition, gave them a fragment of the kneecap of the saint’s right knee, kept in the church of Santa Maria Assunta (the Duomo).
Later, the merchants awarded the people of Cropani the honorary citizenship of Venice.The mother church or the Assunta is a monumental building whose first layout dates to the 13th century. The structure was built with large blocks of tufaceous granite and stands out because of its imposing bell tower, 43 metres high compared to the original 47.
The church of the Assunta houses notable works of art including statues, relics, paintings and frescoes in 18th century Baroque style and a notable wooden ceiling with arabesques with 15th century paintings.
The little ‘Antiquarium Diocesano’ museum inside the Duomo can be visited. It holds many works of sacred art including half-bust reliquaries sculptured in the round, finely decorated in damascened gold leaf dating to the 16th century, precious silver items and sacred 18th century vestments and also an interesting marble tabernacle sculptured bas-relief dating to 1545.
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Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).