The abbey of Vallombrosa rises in the Appennino Tosco-Emiliano to a quota of around 1.000 m.s.m.ls. surrounded by a forest of balmy and resinous plants. In the 1008 Giovanni Gualberto, Florentine noble, that he was from little fact monk, left with a companion the monastery of St. Miniated of Florence, to find a more isolated place whether to pick up him. After a meeting with St. Romualdo, founder of the hermitage of Camaldoli, brought him in a denominated place "Acquabona" where already a small romitorio was found. Where now the monastery of Vallombrosa rises wood cells were built for the new followers that reached Gualberto it was 1015 and St. Giovanni Gualberto it created the Congregation of the Vallombrosanis that foresaw a type of life inspired to the rule of the Benedictines. In 1039 the Abbess Itta gave the necessary ground for the construction of the abbey and the church. In 1055 the Benedictine Congregation received the recognition from Pope Vittore II.
The complex of the abbey of Vallombrosa was erected between 1450 and 1470, important amplifications were performed and you/they were built the new sacristy, the places of the novitiate, and at the end of the XV sec. the complex assumed the characteristics and the aspect actual.
Galileo Galilei has spent a certain period inside the abbey, around 1578, to want some father. The abbey also served for completing meteorological observations on behalf of the Physicians, then you meet in interesting documents related to the different situations of the climate, now picked in the Central National Library in Florence. Other studies concerned the botany and the representation of the different vegetable kinds in Tuscany. The Monastery suffered many damages from Charles V in 1529, you/he/she was restored in Six hundred assuming so the aspect of a severe castle. In the eight hundred, it suffered two suppressions, under Napoleone and bottom Vittorio Emanuele II, becoming in 1866, under the ownership of the State, the center of the National Forest institute. Impoverished of his/her cultural, literary and artistic wealths, the abbey of Vallombrosa, remained of ownership of the State, resources when the religious made you return in 1949. The Church, to an aisle, it has the façade with a loggia that covers that native thirteenth-century. The first Church goes up again, to Two hundred, you/he/she was restored then by Gherardo Salvini in Six hundred and introduces the coat of arms mediceo and the symbol of the order vallombrosano, a baton to form of Tau. The inside is of Baroque style and in a chapel it is situated the shrine of the Five hundred of St. Giovanni Gualberto. Very suggestive it is the Cloister with times to cruise. The Library is constituted from a monumental saloon with a great painted cloth of Arsenio Mascagni, that represents the donation of Matilde of Canossa to St. Bernard of the Ubertis. The place is very verdant and in the summer it is possible to make walks in the wood.
As it is reached:
In auto: A1 gone out of Engraved in Valdarno, then the provincial one is taken for Reggello.
In train: station FS of Engraved in Val of Arno, then he continues with a local bus.
You see the road Paper of Vallombrosa
Religious activity:
Harvest: work (7.30-11-18.30) and festive (7.30-10.30-12-18.30).
Handicraft products:
The religious produce liqueurs and they prepare in their pharmacy produced medicinal.
Useful information:
Place: Vallombrosa
Address: Street St. Benedict 115
Telephone: 055/862251
To know more of it:
www.vallombrosa.it
