Vallombrosa Abbey

Vallombrosa Abbey is located in the locality of the same name in the municipality of Reggello, in the province of Florence and in the diocese of Fiesole. In November 1950, Pope Pius XII elevated the abbey church to the dignity of a Minor Basilica.

The Vallombrosian community built it around 1200, with further extensions over the following centuries.

The Vallombrosani congregation was born under the impulse of San Giovanni Gualberto, born of an illustrious Florentine family, who in 1036 retired with a few followers to a place then called Acquabella.

The monastic reform that was the basis of the new community was destined to play a leading role in the religious, civil and social events of his time and beyond: in his fight against simony which led him to join the contest for investitures between the papacy. and empire, San Giovanni Gualberto promoted the reform of the clergy convinced that life in common and the return to evangelical poverty would lead to the renewal of the Church.

After a first oratory built in wood, the Vallombrosan community was able to move on to a stone church (1058), replaced by a larger building in the years 1224 - 1230, while the monastery also took shape and volume.

After a phase of major works during the fifteenth century, - which is responsible for the large cloister, the sacristy, the tower, the refectory with the kitchen - and after a long series of fires and reconstructions, it is in the seventeenth century, with further improvements in the early eighteenth century, that the church assumes the homogeneous and sumptuous appearance it still has today.

In 1713, at the request of the Vallombrosans, the monastery was elevated to the status of Abbey and its first abbot was Giovanni Francesco Luci.

However, the imposing artistic patrimony accumulated over the centuries has undergone a notable impoverishment following the Napoleonic suppression of the convents (1808) and the demanialisation of the property in the Savoy period (1867); only in 1949 did the Vallombrosans return to take possession of the monastery.

The entire Abbey Church houses important works of art, including a painting by Lorenzo Lippi.

Map: Vallombrosa Abbey