An investigation was undertaken along the north side of the parish church, parts of which date to the Romanesque period, during work on a provincial road. The deposits that were uncovered produced evidence for three different periods of activity. The first construction phase of the church, dated by a number of decorative elements and the known documentary sources to the second half of the 12th century, was attested by the remains of the north apse. The foundations were formed by rough-hewn blocks of local limestone without mortar and the walls were built in small blocks of the same material arranged in regular courses and bonded with loose mortar, as seen in other coeval structures in the area. In origin the church must have had three naves divided by pillars and terminating in semicircular apses. The transept would have been more developed on the south side due to the presence of a chapel-baptistery dedicated to St. John the Baptist and the link to the cloister and the residential buildings. On the north side, opposite the facade and behind the apses, was the cemetery whose earliest phase was represented by four tombs. Dug in sterile soil the oval graves were covered by stone slabs and arranged on the classic alignment close to the chapel at the end of the north nave. In the same sector a sub-circular pit filled with slabs and stones can probably be identified as the base for a grave marker.

A deposit of dark clayey soil was used to cover this latter phase across the entire area. The largest number of tombs excavated belonged to the later cemetery phase (13th-16th century). Sixteen inhumation burials all, apart from two, in earth graves lined with various materials. The deceased presented the classical east-west orientation, only two were aligned north-south with the head to the south closer to the church. The arrangement of the burials was conditioned by the requirements of family groups or the testamentary wishes of the deceased. One of these groups included the burial of a man in a simple earth grave who had two bronze rings on his index finger: a wedding ring and one set with colourless quartz with an intaglio of a bearded man facing left, a medieval imitation of Roman types.
In this period a large wall was constructed on a north-south alignment. Built of large stones bonded with mortar in an irregular arrangement, it was used to create terracing aimed to remedy the increasing difference in height between the eastern and western parts of the area.

A new dump of earth further raised the floor level in the last phase (17th-20th century) during which another wall, built of stones and loose mortar, was constructed abutting the eastern corner of the transept so as to contain the cemetery terrain. This wall can be identified as that built by bishop Maffeo Gambara between 1596 and 1659. The later phases were obliterated by the reclamation of the cemetery area in the modern era following its closure.