Ex Benedictine Monastery
The ex convent of Immaculate Conception, left by the Benedictine community in 1961, is today an elegant building popular with tourists. Its irregular perimeter contains a core dating back to the fourteenth-century, which includes the halls, the cells and the interior cloisters, the roof gardens and the church. Next to it there is an outbuilding (now property of the town-hall) which was used as a storeroom for the convent.
The building was restored in the second half of the nineties. According to tradition, at the beginning of the XIV century, the sisters Eugenia and Virginia Nanni founded this convent after visiting the Holy Land and the Madonna delle Vertighe. The increasing number of women choosing to become a nun, made the two sisters feel the need to choose a religious rule to give to the convent, which became the rule of Saint Benedict. The convent grew, and in the second half of the XVI century it incorporated an ancient hospital of the village managed by laic members of the community. It welcomed the religious group of Saint Clare, but with Leopoldo di Toscana’s suppressions of the orders it was turned into a convent school. After the Napoleonic suppression of the orders in 1808, the convent community was reformed and in 1866 , the convent itself became public property. In February 1886 the Benedictine nuns were able to come back to this convent ; in 1961 they left it to move to another convent located in Pastina Alta. So the empty convent was bought by private citizens in 1972 and restored in the nineties.
The main door situated in Via delle Scalette presents on its top an aedicule tabernacle with a niche decorated with a painted Madonna delle Vertighe; the date on it says MCM (today it's hardly visible) which is the year when a celebration for the Madonna delle Vertighe was held . The little Baroque church in Via Leone Cungi has a simple facade with a stone portal which has a tympanum. On the left there is a square base bell tower, while inside there are three stucco altars from the XVII and XVIII centuries, with decorations and paintings realized in 1992/3 by the Polish artists Tadeusz Boruta and Aldona Mickicwicz. There are some groin vaults, a cantoria on three arcades on four columns with Tuscan capitals.
The building was restored in the second half of the nineties. According to tradition, at the beginning of the XIV century, the sisters Eugenia and Virginia Nanni founded this convent after visiting the Holy Land and the Madonna delle Vertighe. The increasing number of women choosing to become a nun, made the two sisters feel the need to choose a religious rule to give to the convent, which became the rule of Saint Benedict. The convent grew, and in the second half of the XVI century it incorporated an ancient hospital of the village managed by laic members of the community. It welcomed the religious group of Saint Clare, but with Leopoldo di Toscana’s suppressions of the orders it was turned into a convent school. After the Napoleonic suppression of the orders in 1808, the convent community was reformed and in 1866 , the convent itself became public property. In February 1886 the Benedictine nuns were able to come back to this convent ; in 1961 they left it to move to another convent located in Pastina Alta. So the empty convent was bought by private citizens in 1972 and restored in the nineties.
The main door situated in Via delle Scalette presents on its top an aedicule tabernacle with a niche decorated with a painted Madonna delle Vertighe; the date on it says MCM (today it's hardly visible) which is the year when a celebration for the Madonna delle Vertighe was held . The little Baroque church in Via Leone Cungi has a simple facade with a stone portal which has a tympanum. On the left there is a square base bell tower, while inside there are three stucco altars from the XVII and XVIII centuries, with decorations and paintings realized in 1992/3 by the Polish artists Tadeusz Boruta and Aldona Mickicwicz. There are some groin vaults, a cantoria on three arcades on four columns with Tuscan capitals.
