Cultural Center of Tolfa - Civic Museum of the former Convent of S. Maria della Sughera

The Tolfa Cultural Center is housed in the former Augustinian convent of Santa Maria della Sughera.

It includes a library, historical archive, archaeological museum, conference room and restoration laboratory, and hosts events, exhibitions, conferences and cineforums.

Construction of the church began when Agostino Chigi was contractor for the alum mines. At the origin of the foundation of the sanctuary there is a miraculous apparition of the Virgin with the Child near a cork tree. The works began in 1502 with the construction of an octagonal chapel with a lead covered dome which was probably completed only in 1524. The name of the architect who oversaw the project of the sanctuary is not known. Some scholars think that it could be Baldassarre Peruzzi or by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in the early stages of their activity). Chigi entrusted the Augustinians of the hermitage of the Trinity with the custody of the church and the adjoining convent.

In 1552 a crime was committed in the church for which it was forbidden to worship and closed for a short period of time. When it was reopened, cracks began to appear in the chapel so the Municipal Council of Tolfa decided to expand and rebuild the church in its current form. The bell tower was built with the money obtained from the sale of the lead that covered the octagonal chapel. On one side of the octagonal room, a hall with a single nave covered with a roof and equipped with ten altars was added. The recent restoration work on the church has made it possible to discover beneath the floor of the octagonal hall of graves in pits obtained in the rocky bank on which the building is based.

The convent was instead opened towards the end of 1521 or in the first months of 1522, it was organized around a cloister equipped with a cistern on which service areas such as the kitchen, the refectory, the woodshed and a stable were opened. they arranged the monks' cells.

The church and the convent kept their appearance unchanged until 1799 when the French militias sacked the sanctuary. They were subsequently restored between 1801 and 1825, but the convent gradually lost importance until during the Second World War it hosted military troops, then became the seat of a brick factory and finally the workshop of a blacksmith until the work began. restored in 1997.

Today the structure is the seat of the Tolfa Cultural Center (Civic Museum of Tolfa, Municipal Library and the “Giuseppe Cola” Municipal Historical Archive).

Map: Cultural Center of Tolfa - Civic Museum of the former Convent of S. Maria della Sughera