Abbazia di Sant'Antimo

It is proven, that the Abbazia di Sant'Antimo existed since Carolingian times. Legends (of course) know, that it was Charlemagne himself, who founded the abbey when he had left Rome, following the Via Francigena northward. The earliest document relating to the abbey is a land grant of Charlemagne´s son Louis the Pious from 813.

One year after the 1117 earthquake the erection of the church of today started. At that time the powerful abbey was one of the largest landowners in the area. As sovereigns and imperial officials at the same time, they also levied taxes.

The decline began with Siena's awakening striving for power, which conquered Montalcino in 1212. In the following decades, the property of the monastery shrank to a fifth. The church was never completed in the years that followed, as the complex construction probably exceeded the abbey's financial possibilities. A sign of decay is the unfinished facade.

New religious ideas gained influence. The then new orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans, whose monasteries were not built in the cities, gained strength. The Benedictine wish to be able to follow the rule ora et labora in seclusion was pushed into the background.

In 1462 Pope Pius II suppressed the abbey, annexed whatever was left - and handed it over to the Bishop of Montalcino-Pienza, who was his nephew.
1992 the abbey became an active monastery again with the arrival of a new congregation of Canons Regular of the Premonstratensian Order.
The architecture seems influenced by churches in Burgundy. It looks a bit like a sibling of the church at Vignory in Champagne.

The narrow nave impresses with its height of 20 meters.