According to a thesis of influential voices, the Church of Santa Maria della Neve was originally a chapel built for the castle of San Donato. Dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, it also appears that the building housed a panel depicting the saint by the Casentino painter Giovanni del Biondo. In all likelihood it was instead built together with a dispensary dated before 1376 and entrusted to the management of the Augustinian friars and the Company of St. Mary; devoted to Our Lady of the Snows, the company later became autonomous in the administration of the dispensary.
The architecture of the church presents a single nave with features typical of churches of the mendicant orders, but with numerous interventions made on the facade and walls. Frescoes from the 1400s, including a Madonna and Child between Saint Simeon and Saint Thaddeus and portions of another Madonna placed in the high altar decorated later in the Baroque style with faux marble and twisted columns, enrich the interior.
