Have you already visited the Farneta Abbey? The Abbey of Farneta is a jewel that dates back to the pre-Romanesque period and is located a few kilometers from Cortona, in Tuscany.
The monastery dates back to the Lombard age having been founded around the eighth century by the monks of San Colombano. The current building, however, should date back to the 9th or 10th century. In fact it is mentioned for the first time in a document of 1014. This documentation would be the oldest attestation of the Romanesque style in Aretino.
The property then passed to the Olivetan monks, a period in which the abbey reached power and wealth, arriving in the thirteenth century to control much of the lower territory of the Val di Chiana.
The suppression took place during the French occupation in 1799 when the complex was already in decline. In fact, only the abbey church remains of the original complex.
On the right wall of the transept there is a patchy fresco with the Madonna and Child between Saints Sebastian and Rocco, signed by Papacello and dated to 1527, which also includes a view of the abbey at that time, still equipped with a bell tower.
The stone ciborium is also Renaissance. A holy water stoup rests on two Roman marble capitals. Outside, on the sides of the entrance, two other Roman bare columns in oriental granite survive, formerly part of the cloister.
Photo Maria Lucia Sforza
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