Abbazia di San Galgano and the Sword in the Stone

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A Cistercian abbey church open to the sky, and on the hill above it a round chapel holding a sword driven into the rock in the 1180s. Forty minutes from Siena, and the roof has been gone for four hundred years.

Status: Open to visitors. The roofless abbey church is managed and ticketed by the Fondazione San Galgano on behalf of the Comune di Chiusdino; the Eremo di Montesiepi remains a consecrated chapel and is free to enter. Prices and hours verified at the Fondazione San Galgano's own site on 13 August 2026.

At a Glance

San Galgano is two monuments in one valley of the Sienese hills: the vast, roofless Cistercian abbey church on the floor of the Val di Merse, and, on the hill of Montesiepi above it, the round Romanesque hermitage built over the rock into which the knight Galgano Guidotti is said to have thrust his sword. The abbey is among the earliest and most complete examples of Cistercian-Gothic architecture in Tuscany; the hermitage holds a genuine medieval sword embedded in the stone, together with frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The two stand about a kilometre apart and are visited together.

Where it is: the Val di Merse

The abbey stands on the valley floor of the Val di Merse in the comune of Chiusdino, in the south-western part of the province of Siena, near the river Merse. The Rotonda / Eremo di Montesiepi sits on the low hill immediately above it, reached either by a short marked footpath from the abbey — about ten to fifteen minutes on foot — or by the access road from the car park.

• From Siena: c. 33 km by road, about 45 minutes by car
• From Massa Marittima: c. 35 km, about 40 minutes by car
• From Volterra: c. 55–65 km

Did you know? The Cistercians chose the site deliberately: like their other foundations it sits beside a river for water power, near woods and cultivable land to reclaim, and close to a route connecting to the Via Francigena.

Saint Galgano Guidotti, the knight of Chiusdino

Galgano was born around 1148 at Chiusdino into a family of minor local nobility, and is described in the sources as a dissolute young man who followed his father into the life of a knight. After his father’s death, dreams and visions led him to a profound conversion. Riding towards Civitella Marittima, his horse is said to have stopped and carried him to the hill of Montesiepi, where — moved to prayer — he drove his sword into the rock, turning it into a cross as a gesture of peace and renunciation. His retreat lasted only about a year: he died in 1181.

The canonisation inquiry was held at Montesiepi in August 1185, only about four years after his death, on the initiative of the bishop of Volterra; the documentation gathers the testimonies of witnesses including Galgano’s mother, the hermits who had known him, and people who claimed miracles through his intercession. It is widely regarded by scholars as the earliest canonisation process whose acts survive — a position rooted in Andre Vauchez’s inventory of surviving processus documents. The Treccani Dizionario Biografico states the canonisation took place with all probability in 1185 under Pope Lucius III. It is not certain whether there was a formal papal sentence or whether the commission proceeded by delegated jurisdiction.

• Born c. 1148, Chiusdino; died 1181
• Sword thrust into the rock: traditionally 1180
• Canonisation inquiry: August 1185
• Only surviving bodily relic: his head, in a reliquary at Chiusdino

Did you know? Galgano’s parents are said to have made a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of San Michele on Monte Gargano before his birth — one of several links between Galgano and the cult of the Archangel Michael.

The Rotonda / Eremo di Montesiepi

The round chapel was commissioned by the bishop of Volterra within a few years of the saint’s death. Its most striking feature is its two-tone masonry: courses of stone alternate with courses of brick, culminating in a dome of concentric white and red rings. A portico protecting the entrance was added a few years after construction. At the centre of the original floor, the tip of the hill’s living rock emerges, with the saint’s sword embedded in it.

In the first half of the fourteenth century a rectangular side chapel was added and frescoed by Ambrogio Lorenzetti with scenes from the life of Galgano together with a Maesta and an Annunciation. Ambrogio is documented at the abbey of San Galgano in August 1334, and an inscription once on the frame of the altarpiece’s central panel recorded that the patron of both the painting and the chapel, completed in 1336, was Ristoro da Selvatella; the frescoes are accordingly dated to the mid-1330s. They are in a very poor state of preservation: they were detached in the 1960s, revealing their preparatory sinopie, and later returned to the wall. Restoration campaigns have continued since. The Maesta is one of only three monumental Maesta frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the others being in Sant’Agostino in Siena and at Massa Marittima. A notable discovery during restoration was that Lorenzetti first painted the Virgin holding a sceptre and an orb before overpainting her in a more conventional form.

Did you know? On the morning of the summer solstice, a shaft of sunlight is said to enter through the window behind the altar and form a circle of light that gradually moves to touch the sword.

The sword in the stone: what is established, what is contested

The sword is real and genuinely embedded in the rock. This is the central fact, and it is well established. A campaign of scientific investigations was coordinated in 2001 by the chemist Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia, with the permission of the parish priest and the Archbishop of Siena, and published in 2006.

What the studies actually concluded:

• The metal. Iron cannot be dated absolutely, but the composition of the metal did not reveal modern alloys and is therefore fully compatible with a medieval origin. Stylistically the sword is consistent with other weapons of the late twelfth century, with pictorial and documentary evidence of a sword in this rock going back at least to 1270. In short: the sword is consistent with, not positively dated to, the era of the legend
• Embedded and broken. Endoscopic inspection confirmed that a blade continues below the rock. The visible upper part and the buried lower part are a single sword whose broken edges fit together perfectly; the break is the result of twentieth-century vandalism
• Ground-penetrating radar. A survey found mostly gravel and earth beneath the floor, with one exception: an artificial structure near the north side of the chapel, possibly a burial recess — probably not the saint’s intact grave, since archival research found that a recess there had already been excavated in the 17th century
• Two mummified hands. Displayed in the frescoed chapel and said in the legend to belong to a would-be thief. Radiocarbon dating returned a twelfth-century date, contemporary with the saint

The sword was easily removable until it was fixed with molten lead in the 1920s; it was broken and tampered with by vandals in the 1960s and again in 1991. It is today protected under a clear case.

On the Arthurian connection: this should not be asserted as fact. Galgano is a documented historical figure whose canonisation acts date to 1185, while King Arthur belongs to legend. Some scholars have noted that the acts of Galgano’s process predate Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval and later Arthurian romances, and have argued that the Tuscan story may have influenced the sword-in-the-stone motif rather than the reverse. Others accept that the two stories are contemporary but are unconvinced of any dependence. Crucially, the motifs are inverted: Galgano thrusts his sword into the rock in renunciation, whereas Arthur draws his from a stone. The debate is unresolved.

Did you know? The same 2001 campaign carbon-dated pieces of wood from a small lead box buried near the sword to the nineteenth century, even though the mummified arms tested as medieval.

The Abbey

The Cistercian community that had settled at Montesiepi began building the great abbey on the valley floor in 1218; the administrative records in the State Archive of Siena attest a building site running from 1218 to 1288, the year of consecration. The first master mason had completed work at the abbey of Casamari, with which San Galgano shares many features. The church follows a Latin-cross plan with three naves and is roughly 70 metres long, though sources disagree on the exact dimensions. The design belongs to the austere Cistercian idiom crossed with the new French Gothic, and the building was important for the diffusion of Gothic architecture in Tuscany.

Enriched by an enormous landed estate, by the mid-thirteenth century San Galgano was among the most powerful Cistercian foundations in Tuscany, protected by emperors and exempted from the tithe. Its monks played a central role in the Republic of Siena: they administered the Biccherna, the Republic’s treasury, served as notaries, judges and diplomats, and were among the supervisors of works at Siena Cathedral.

Decline followed. Famine and the Black Death struck the community hard; the abbey was raided by mercenary companies, including troops under Sir John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto), from about 1363, and by the end of the century the community had shrunk to a handful. In 1474 the monks moved to their palace in Siena; from the early 16th century the abbey was held by commendatory abbots, whose mismanagement accelerated its ruin — the lead roof covering was stripped and sold. The vaults collapsed, and on 22 January 1786 the long-unstable bell tower fell, damaging the church and monastery. The church was deconsecrated in the late 18th century, traditionally in 1789, and the monastic buildings became a farm. A conservative restoration, consolidating what remained without arbitrary reconstruction, began in the 1920s.

Did you know? The single anthropomorphic capital in the church — a small face amid foliage, above a crouching lion, on the first pillar to the left of the main door — is thought to be a portrait of the last master builder.

Current status, restoration and use

Since 1 September 2017 the whole monumental complex has been the property of the Comune di Chiusdino, which had previously held it on concession. It is now managed and ticketed by the Fondazione San Galgano, whose single ticket also admits the Museo civico e diocesano d’arte sacra at Chiusdino and the Museo Archeologico di Miranduolo. A programme of restoration and conservation is under way.

The roofless nave, with grass and gravel underfoot and the sky for a ceiling, is used for classical-music concerts and civil weddings, and has a long history as a film location. Its most famous appearance is the final sequence of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983). Franco Zeffirelli also used the ruins, and the abbey has featured in television series and music videos.

A word of caution about one frequently repeated attribution: San Galgano is not a location in The English Patient. That film — directed by Anthony Minghella, not Steven Soderbergh — used the monastery of Sant’Anna in Camprena near Pienza, together with Pienza, Ripafratta and the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo.

Did you know? In the closing shot of Nostalghia, the “Russian” house inside the abbey was a miniature model, blended with the ruins by forced perspective — the whole scene was constructed inside the roofless nave.

Practical Information

Checked 5 August 2026.

Opening hours — abbey. Open daily, continuous hours: November to April 09:00–18:00; May and June 09:00–19:00; July and August 09:00–20:00; September and October 09:00–19:00. Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday 09:00–19:00. The two museums keep their own hours: October to May 10:30–18:00, June to September 10:30–19:00. There is no genuine night-time visit — the abbey is striking floodlit from outside, but the claim that it can be visited at night is false.

Closed 27 September 2026. The Fondazione has announced that the whole abbey complex is exceptionally closed to visitors that day.

Prices. Three tickets, all sold at the abbey and at the museums in Chiusdino, on site or online. All Inclusive (abbey and both museums): full €9.00, reduced €7.00, family €18.00 for two adults and one child under 18, €20.00 for two adults and two or more. Abbey plus one museum: full €8.00, reduced €6.00, family €16.00 or €18.00 on the same basis. A single-museum ticket at €4.00 full, €3.00 reduced, €9.00 or €10.00 family exists, but only for visitors who already hold the abbey-plus-one-museum ticket — it is not a cheaper way into the abbey. Reduced applies to over-65s, ages 6–18, groups over 20 and students with a university card. Free for disabled visitors and the carers named on a disability card, licensed guides, children under 6, residents of the Comune di Chiusdino, ICOM members, and one teacher per 15 pupils.

Eremo di Montesiepi. A working, consecrated chapel; entry is free, open daily from morning until around sunset. A Mass is celebrated on Sunday mornings.

Parking. A large, level, free car park serves both monuments, a few minutes’ walk from the abbey, with a lower section for camper vans.

Getting there — by car. From Siena take the SS73 towards Rosia and Frosini, then the SP441 towards Massa Marittima, following signs for the abbey.

Getting there — by bus. Public transport is limited and not designed for day-trippers. The regional operator is Autolinee Toscane; services in the Val di Merse area serve Chiusdino and nearby villages, but there is no convenient direct stop at the abbey. For most visitors a car is far more practical.

Accessibility. The abbey church has no floor in the conventional sense: the interior is grass and gravel, uneven underfoot, which makes wheelchair movement difficult, though the great space is on one level and step-free at the entrance. The hermitage sits on a hill, reached by a rough footpath from the abbey or by the access road. Admission is free for disabled visitors and a carer.

Best time to visit. Early morning and the hour before closing give the softest light and the fewest visitors.

Weddings and events. The abbey is a sought-after venue for civil ceremonies; religious rites use the Eremo di Montesiepi. During a ceremony the abbey is normally closed to visitors for the duration. If you are planning a visit on a summer weekend, be aware that a wedding may briefly interrupt access.

Dress code at the chapel. The Eremo di Montesiepi is a consecrated church; modest dress and quiet behaviour are expected, particularly during Mass.

Photography and drones. Photography is permitted, including of the sword under its case. Drones are effectively not allowed: the site is subject to flight restrictions and take-off is prohibited in the protected area. Confirm with the Comune di Chiusdino before flying.

Sources: Fondazione San Galgano (fondazionesangalgano.it); Comune di Chiusdino (comune.chiusdino.siena.it); Treccani, Dizionario Biografico; Luigi Garlaschelli, Skeptical Inquirer (2006) and CICAP; Visit Tuscany (visittuscany.com); Autolinee Toscane (at-bus.it); Andre Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Checked 5 August 2026.