Abbey of San Galgano

Interesting facts

Galgano's canonisation, opened in 1185 only four years after his death, is regarded as the first carried out by the Church through a formal legal process.

In 1266 Brother Melano, a monk of San Galgano, signed the contract with Nicola Pisano for the celebrated marble pulpit of Siena Cathedral.

From 1257 monks of the abbey repeatedly held the office of camerlengo of the Biccherna, in effect running the treasury of the Republic of Siena.

Successive emperors, Frederick II among them, confirmed the abbey's privileges, which even included the right to mint its own coins.

The ruined church is a Latin cross about 69 metres long and 21 metres wide, and its floor is bare earth that turns to grass every spring.

Unusually for the Cistercians, the church had a bell tower; its 14th-century great bell survived the 1786 collapse, only to be melted down and sold.

After the church was deconsecrated in 1789, the abandoned abbey was for a time used as a foundry, while the monastery buildings became a farm.

Restoration from the 1920s under Gino Chierici followed John Ruskin's ideas: the ruin was only consolidated, with nothing rebuilt or invented.

In 1960 thieves broke the sword at Montesiepi; it was repaired, cemented into the rock and is now protected under a transparent case.

The roofless nave has served as a film set, appearing in Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (1983) and Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996).

Why it is worth it

The Cistercian abbey of San Galgano was raised between 1220 and 1268 near the site where the hermit-knight Galgano Guidotti had lived and died, and within decades it had become the most powerful Cistercian foundation in Tuscany, controlling substantial farmland and trade routes around Siena.

The 14th century brought famine in 1328 and plague in 1348 that decimated the monastic community, followed by repeated sacking by mercenary companies during Italy's endemic wars of the period — by the time the last monks left, the abbey's fortunes had collapsed entirely.

How the church lost its roof is disputed. One account holds that the lead sheeting was stripped and sold in 1500 to pay off the monks' debts; a more recent architectural study attributes the collapse instead to structural failure on 22 January 1786. Either way, the nave has stood open to the sky ever since, its bare stone walls and empty rose window framing the Tuscan clouds.

A short walk uphill stands the round Hermitage of Montesiepi, built on the site of Galgano's own retreat, where a sword is set into the rock at the chapel's centre. Legend holds that Galgano drove it there himself when he renounced worldly life to become a hermit — a story that, unusually, has a sliver of physical backing: metallurgical analysis has dated the sword itself to the 12th century, the period in which Galgano actually lived.

Good to know

The nave has had no roof for centuries, so there is no shelter from rain or sun once inside.

Getting there

24 km from Siena. Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR) is about 73 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Abbey of Saint Galgano was a Cistercian Monastery founded in the valley of the river Merse between the towns of Chiusdino and Monticiano, in the province of Siena, region of Tuscany, Italy. Presently, the roofless walls of the Gothic style 13th-century Abbey church still stand.

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