San Galgano (Tuscany): pop. 60,000 [ MAP ] 

Leave Siena by Porta San Marco and take the state road no 73, pass the village of Rosia on the edge of River Merse valley, then follow the road signs to Monticiano and/or Massa Marittima. After 40 minute drive you reach San Galgano. The old Abbey lies halfway between Monticiano and Chiusdino.
 

The story: San Galgano Guidotti, in whose honor the great ruined church was founded, is one of the patron saints of Siena. It was born  in Chiusdino of a noble family and quarreled one day with a youthful knight, who, being jealous of his good looks, jeered at him because his sword hilt was in the form of a cross. "One day" he sneered, "he will turn into a rascally monk, for like a monk he wears a cross at his girdle". Galgano, who was quick-tempered, drew his sword and ran him through. One night soon after he dreamed that the Archangel Michael came to him and demanded that he should become a knight. Galgano was delighted to consent, but when St. Michael saw his sword stained with a brother's blood he had to refuse him, saying: "Thou canst not follow me". When Galgano awoke he was in great distress and determined to change his way of life. He prayed and fasted. Two years later St. Michael appeared to him again and leading him through many perilous ways brought him into the presence of our Lord enthroned with the twelve apostles. Our Lord spoke to him and told him his repentance was accepted and he might henceforth become his servant.  Galgano now resolved to forsake the world. He left the city and built himself a hut on the top of a hill, now called Monte Siepi, in fact, on the hill just above where the Abbey stands today. Then he took his sword  and thrust it up to the hilt in a mound there which suddenly turned into a solid rock and held the sword fast so that only the cross of the hilt appeared. But at one time when there was a plague in Siena, while he was absent there, tending the sick, evil men burnt his hut and broke his sword hilt. Finding the sword broken on his return, he held the pieces together which by miracle were made whole and friends built him another hut, where he lived till, being very old, kneeling before his sword, he died. He was canonized in 1185.

 

The present building was begun in 1224 and finished in 1288. The magnificent church is the finest among the Romanesque-Gothic buildings in Italy. The Abbey church is still a magnificent building, a most impressive piece of northern architecture, a typical Cistercian church. The  unfinished facade is modest, as becomes a Cistercian  building. Of the three doors of the middle one has fine frieze in the architrave: the apse has two orders of windows surmounted by a single rose; the right transept also has rose window; the left a large pointed window once trefoiled. Within, this great church of travertine and brick is about 200 feet long with three naves divided by sixteen pillars and a transept which is also divided, on one side into three aisles, on the other into chapels. At the end of the left transept is a door which give access to a stairway, at the top of which visitor has the best view of the church. On the nearby hill of Monte Siepi  there is the Romanesque church, banded with marble stripes, and frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Madonna and child with angels and Eve at her feet) and Pietro Lorenzetti. (Resurrection). In the center of the church covered by  glass case is the sword in the stone.