The Church of Santa Maria de Equo of Ruscio, today Santa Maria del Piano, is considered of Lombard foundation but the structure dates back to XII or XIII century. The church reuses Roman blocks (with two pads of solar symbolism) and preserves sixteenth-century frescoes in the nave and frescoes of the XIV-XVI centuries in the crypt.

The Church of Santa Maria de Equo, now known as Santa Maria del Piano, is set in a vast plateau of alluvial origin, crossed by Corno River (there was a previous center of pagan worship place, set to control an important road network, next to the modern road to Trivio and Rescia). Its foundation is generally traced back to the period of the last Lombard domination (eighth century). Its name remembers the ministerium or the gastald of Equo in the Duchy of Spoleto, a minor territorial district, inserted later on among the oldest gastalds of Ponte and Narnate, known until now only by late sources of the eleventh century (precisely to the years 1022 and 1024). The establishment of Santa Maria de Equo and its constitution into a Benedictine priory dependent on the Abbey of San Pietro in Valle in Ferentillo (TR), are preceded by an earlier stage, with the founding of a small Benedictine chapel. The remotest documents so far traced around the church do not date back before the fourteenth century, thus the classification into a parish church and then in "Baptist church", with privileges and dependencies, under which are subjected all other churches and chapels of the area, without a baptistery. During the same century with the depopulation of the countryside, there is an involution of the responsibilities of the church in favor of the Church of ​​St. Nicholas, which gets the jurisdiction and the baptismal font (around 1310). Subsequently, transformed into a simple benefit "sinecura" (without care of souls), a hermit takes care of "S. Maria de Jecu", while the revenues are given to a religious benefited, without prior functions, offices and any residence, which are due to the local cured. This legal situation is registered on the catalog of the tithes of the Church of Rome in the years 1333- 1334, fully confirmed by a sixteenth century manuscript commonly known as Pelosius, drawn up in the original draft around 1393. The name of some of these parish priests are known, including Jacopo and Buzio of Monteleone in 1465, D. Giuseppe Rigi attested in 1580, D. Antonio Maria in 1584, D. Gentile Piersanti (but native of Gavelli) in 1600 and D. Luca Piersanti beneficiary in 1653, Card. Joseph Vallemani (1648-1725), already Prior of St. Nicholas of Fabriano, in the early eighteenth century. In 1702 in a publication Antonio Piersanti notes the aura of mystery that hovered around the structure with the following words: "This church is often visited during the night by those who are seeking for treasures, because it is traditionally known that it is a place exposed to the Cannon of Monteleone, thus it hides the most precious things, which according to the vicissitudes of the times are subjected to robbery”. With the death of the last hermit, Fra Paolo, in 1731 the Church of Santa Maria de Equo (formerly simple benefit), is spoiled by its goods. In fact, due to the interest of the priest Giovan Battista Menetoni, Pope Clement XII (1652-1740, Pope from 1730) ordered with his apostolic letter, addressed to the Bishop of Spoleto, to transfer the tithes and rents of canonries in favor of the parochial church of San Nicola. The original nucleus of the building, result of a series of transformations, is behind the altar, placed at a lower level of the church floor level. This cramped room, places on a basement and later used as a charnel house, it is attributable to the twelfth century, although with later alterations. It is barrel-vaulted and It has a narrow window in protoromanic slit (the taper originally narrowed towards the outside, but, later the relining of the oldest wall, a second taper open to the outside is added). The flooring is formed by the juxtaposition of irregular slabs of stone, which keep track of the removed altar. A small ledge indicates the ancient entrance (and thus the original orientation of the cell) in the direction of the old way passing east of the building. Above the crypt there is the hermit's dwelling, destroyed in the earthquake of 1703 and later rebuilt. The crypt is incorporated in the Romanesque structure of the church, with the linear entrance portal, which forms a small bezel surrounded by a simple double ring at the top, and outside the facing is characterized by regular and smooth stones, which reuse big Roman stone blocks, some of them are carved. Around the corners of the side walls, into tangency with the closing wall of the building, there are two relief blocks: one presents a "wheel rim", a circle with an inscribed cross, usually identified as the sun symbol or the infinite; the other has a slotted relief that forms two opposite triangles at the vertex, intended to represent the above and the below, the heavens and the earth. Both relieves are to be considered into the group of meandroid solar figurations (modular and repetitive) and represent a rarity in the Roman times, testifying a continuity of chthonic rites dating back to the Iron Age. On the left side of the church there are some overhanging consoles, interpreted as the remains of a porch below which, until the thirteenth century, the valley's communities use to gather to keep the citizens assembly (conventus ante ecclesiam) and, subsequently, to set the covered market. The buttresses added for structural reasons in the eighteenth century on the right side of the structure is impressive and, in the space in front of the façade, there are the traces of a large narthex. The church has a single nave, with eighteenth-century altar adorned by stucco motifs that acts as a throne to the statue of the Madonna and Child, whose figures are concealed by large robes and are crowned. Along the walls of the nave there are fragments of frescoes, with luxurious frames (decorated by circular stones and diamond-shaped motifs), which circumscribe the space occupied by the characters, isolated against the rich drapery background. On the left wall there is a tripartite panel, containing the figures of the Virgin with the Child, Saint Anthony Abbot and Lucy, and a second fragment with San Sebastian and San Rocco. On the right wall there are two contiguous panels, each depicting the Saints Rocco and Sebastian (with slight variations compared to the previous subject) and the other the Virgin with the Child. The same style is present in the upper church of the Convent of St. Francis of Monteleone di Spoleto, in the two of the aisle panels at the right side, commissioned by a certain Angelo di  Ciascho (a Madonna of Loreto in 1530 and a panel with the Saints Joseph and Anthony of Padua dated 1533), stylistically similar and with the same frame of Ruscio paintings. Other frescoes are in the crypt with the same sixteenth-century decoration, such as the motif of the vault that consists in a frame in a white background invaded by stars and red and green circles (which imitates the crypt of the Franciscan complex of Monteleone); the painting of the Crucified Christ, between the Madonna and St. John the Evangelist, which in the lower part has a small votive painting with the Madonna and a Saint; the partial shape of a Saint on a ocher background, cut by the opening of a door. On the wall, where it was the altar, there is an older layer of painting, which depicts a knight with nimbus and sword, identified by an inscription as "S. Libertus" and dated back to 1370. It might be therefore a link in purchasing with the hermit Liberto (or Gilberto), a member of the Tiberti and Terziario Francescano family, who lived in Santa Maria de Equo and was buried around 1400. He died in odor of sanctity, he is related to stories of many wonders. Architectural and frescoes restoration are made in 2004 and 2011. Amongst the ancient liturgical objects, it is preserved in San Francesco a fluted cup in copper, with silver leaves and with the following engraving: "RES PVBL. MONTIS LEONIS ", dated to the seventeenth century. The church is occasionally open for worship. The day of the ancient feast is on September 8^th, when an important fair took place around the complex.