where it is - Monte Oliveto Maggiore, S. Antimo, Montalcino, San Quirico d'Orcia

Monte Oliveto Maggiore

Monte Oliveto Maggiore In Monte Oliveto Maggiore there is an abbey, still inhabited by monks called olivetani, of the Saint Benedict order. These two orders are just the same concerning the vows they follow: only they wanted to maintain their own name. They follow Saint Benedict's rule which is express in the Latin sentence ora et labora which means "pray and work" and to pray they go to the church. Their job was mainly that of the handwriting of all the books the Abbey library possessed, and they were thousands and thousands! Many of these books are really old ones, indeed. Until nowadays Monte Oliveto monks are busy repairing old books and tough they live in reclusion, someone told me that if you are a learned man they let you came in the inner clusters to show you their traditional job and its secrets. I cannot came inside, but when I go there I usually stand outside under the Cypress trees and I enjoy the silence of such place.

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S. Antimo

S. Antimo My friend, the professor, told me that Saint Antimo Abbey is a very important church in this territory. Well, maybe: for sure it is really beautiful. It has been made all in travertine stone, an elegant local stone. It stands all alone in the middle of a field, the hills beside, it seems it is waiting you though it turns the back on you as if it won't show that it is waiting right you. My friend explained me that Saint Antimo got the deambulatorio, which should be that space around the altar where the pilgrims could go in, make a round and get out. I thought that one entered in a church to stay inside and pray, but he said that the deambulatorio was something typical of those churches, which were very important for the pilgrims. Today many go there to listen the sacred music and the Mass singed by the priests in Gregorian chant. And when each one goes back home and the church remains empty and silent, always on the back, it seems to me as if the church was sad of it, missing all that coming and going.

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Montalcino

Montalcino rocca Montalcino is famous for its brunello wine, which one of the most known and appreciated in the world. In the old times Montalcino citizens had something else to care for. Florence was more and more powerful and rich; it had become the owner of all Tuscany. But Siena citizens didn't surrender to it and when, around the middle of XVI century AD, they had to do it and to let Florence to rule in their home, many citizens of Siena instead of stay quite and watch, run to Montalcino. This village gets a nice fort: so those citizens started to stay on their own, and made a different race. They resisted the assaults for four years and none convinced them to surrender. Florence could get in by force, so tried to offer money to a calabrese captain enlisted under Siena. But he refused. At the end, however, Siena had to open the doors. But they did it without being won on a battlefield: they surrendered when they decided to do it.

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San Quirico d'Orcia

San Quirico collegiata San Quirico got a church so old that the village took its name from it and the church is today called simply Collegiata. Originally this church was named Church of Saint Quirico and Saint Judith. Siena's and Arezzo's bishops fought to have it. It is written, somewhere in a book, that in the VIII century AD these two bishops asked an old priest and a new one to say under oath to whom belonged the church and they replayed to Arezzo. But Siena's bishops every now and then tried to take it so that through the years eleven times occurred some fighting, without any result. Then in the XV century AD, when Pope Pio II rose, who was from Pienza and didn't care about Arezzo, the Collegiate of San Quirico became of Siena definitely. On the main entrance there two lions lying down one in front of the other: to me they seem to be Siena and Arezzo that have decided to do fifty fifty, at the end.

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