Sacro Eremo di Camaldoli

On a forested ridge above Poppi, San Romualdo gathered the first hermit cells of Camaldoli. The Sacro Eremo became the birthplace of the Camaldolese congregation, whose life joins solitary hermitage with the common life of the monastery below. Monks of the Benedictine community continue to live here.

Why it matters

The foundation is associated with Romualdo of Ravenna. Tradition places his arrival around 1012; the community’s history recounts that Teodaldo, bishop of Arezzo, granted him the site, where a church and the first five cells were built. The hermitage now has twenty houses in five rows, the latest added in 1743. The arrangement of cells around a common church recalls the laura model of early desert monasticism.

What to notice

The cells are small houses with a corridor, living room, study and chapel, arranged around a walled garden. The cell associated with Romualdo was incorporated into the library building in the seventeenth century. The Church of the Transfigured Saviour has a façade dating to 1713 and an eighteenth-century interior. Its door bears a Madonna and Child relief carved by Gregorio di Lorenzo in 1460. In the chapel of Sant’Antonio del Deserto, an altarpiece by Andrea della Robbia depicts the Madonna and Child with saints. The former ice house is now the Cappella del Vaso di Creta.

Context and history

The constitutions of prior Rodolfo I (1074–1088) recount Romualdo’s foundation at the request of the bishop of Arezzo. From the hermitage the congregation expanded to the monastery of Camaldoli below; the two houses represent the solitary and communal sides of Camaldolese life. After the suppression of religious houses, the hermits’ library was moved to Poppi and became part of the Rilliana collection.