AT A GLANCE
Why go?
In a quiet green fold of the Val d'Orcia, about nine kilometres from the wine town of Montalcino, the Abbazia di Sant'Antimo rises from a meadow like something summoned out of a medieval dream. Built almost entirely from a luminous travertine veined with alabaster, its pale walls take on a different glow with every shift of sky and season. Widely considered one of the masterpieces of Romanesque architecture in Italy, the abbey is a place where grand history, refined carving and living monastic prayer still meet in a single hushed setting.↗↗
The church you see today is a 12th-century conception, but legend traces its origins far earlier. According to tradition the abbey was founded by Charlemagne himself in 781, on his return from Rome along the Via Francigena, as a vow for deliverance from a plague that had halted his retinue in the valley of the Starcia stream. The site became an imperial Benedictine monastery, and its golden age left it one of the wealthiest houses in the region. Decline followed, the abbey was suppressed by Pope Pius II in 1462, and centuries later a community of canons revived its monastic life, so that services and chant once again echo through the nave.↗
