The abbey of San Salvatore was founded in the eighth century at the wish of the Lombard king Rachis, and legend tells that the decision came from an apparition: the Trinity is said to have appeared to the king on the top of a tree, and around that tree the crypt was built. The scene is still on the arms of the comune. The reality, obviously, was political: a monastery on the slopes of the Amiata served to protect and control the traffic along the Via Francigena and to bring that part of Lombard Tuscia under cultivation, and as early as 750 the noble Erfo, son of the duke of Friuli, entrusted to the fortified monastery the feudal control of the Amiata territories as far as the valley of the Paglia. Over the centuries the abbey's power grew until it went beyond the Amiata, and around its walls the village grew. Then the village began to take back what the abbey had taken: in 1081 the monks were writing to the emperor Henry IV to denounce the Aldobrandeschi, who were building castles on abbey lands in order to usurp them, and on 14 July 1212 the abbot Rolando, with the document known as the Costituto badengo, was forced to cede to the inhabitants lands and rights, among them that of electing their own representatives and their podestà.
The rest is a long surrender. In 1228 pope Gregory IX gave the monastery to the Cistercians to raise it up again; in 1265 Siena arrived and imposed an act of submission, but did not keep military control, and the Paglia valley became a land of bandits — a century later Ghino di Tacco was raiding there. In 1278 the villages of the valley, some of Etruscan origin like Callemala and Voltole, were abandoned and their inhabitants moved up here, inside the walls. In 1347 the annexation to Siena became definitive. The last piece was taken by the village itself: between 1782 and 1784 the grand duke of Tuscany suppressed the monastery and privatised the abbey's lands, which were bought by the local heads of household, gathered for the purpose in a company called Macchia Faggeta. From this abbey comes the famous Codex Amiatinus, of the seventh century, today in the Laurenziana Library in Florence; and here was written, in 1087, the Postilla Amiatina, considered one of the first documents of the Italian vernacular.
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📅 Every year, on 19 September
On 19 September Abbadia San Salvatore celebrates Pope Saint Mark; the abbey preserves the saint's bust reliquary, made by Mariano d'Agnolo Romanelli in 1381, and a chasuble attributed to him from the 8th century.
Almonds, candied fruit, flour, honey and spices pressed into a low disc: Siena's panforte has a recipe documented since 1205.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Abbadia San Salvatore, but an easy day trip away.
