Convent of the Colombaio

A few kilometers from Seggiano and the castle of Potentino, on the western slopes of Poggio Ferro, there are the ruins of the Franciscan convent of the Colombaio, documented since 1251, but dating back to an even earlier period and considered one of the retreat places of San Francesco and his followers. The Convent welcomed personalities who honored the Franciscan Order such as the blessed Filippino of Castile, Guido da Selvena, Giovanni Colombini, founder of the Jesuits and Onofrio da Seggiano. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, following the Franciscan reform, the Colombaio passed to the Observance which proposed a model of life more faithfully inspired by the Rule and Testament of St. Francis and was chosen as the location responsible for welcoming novices. But the history of the Convent is not only linked to the Observance, of which it represented the second convent in Tuscany after that of Fiesole, but to the fact that in this place, starting from 1402, St. Bernardino of Siena made his novitiate, celebrated the first mass, and he practiced the art of preaching and remained there for nine years. The Seggianesi were therefore the “first to reap the fruits of his preaching” and have always maintained a special devotion to the Saint of which they keep some relics in the Church of Corpus domini, remembering him with a feast on the anniversary of his death. The convent was inhabited until its suppression in 1764 while the church continued to be officiated until 1827 and then was definitively abandoned.
What appears to our eyes today of this ancient complex are ruins that are difficult to defend from vegetation. With the fall of the bell tower, which took place in 1978, nothing remains standing but part of the walls and the lateral buttresses that overlook an olive grove.
The heart of the complex was presumably made up of a square cloister, surrounded on three sides (South East, North West, South West) by a corridor more than 2 meters wide with a sloping roof inwards, whose central point was the cistern. Adjacent to the cloister and between the two corridors leading to the garden, there was an area that could accommodate the refectory, the kitchen, the oven and nearby the library.
To the south-west were the main entrance of the convent and that of the church which opened under a portico or horizontal loggia overlooking the square and the cemetery area.