Cascina, Montione | Abbey of San Savino

The abbey of San Savino, between Pisa and Cascina, is a rare example of a fortified religious settlement. Of Lombard origin (year 780) belonged first to the Benedictines, then to the Camaldolese before being fortified for military purposes.

The Pisan Romanesque style

The large complex is divided into two floors: a ground floor that housed warehouses, cellars and stables and an upper floor where the monks lived. The church, in Pisan Romanesque style, is built with blocks of limestone of Monte Pisano and presents the typical monastic structure in the shape of a Latin cross with a single nave, cross vaults, semicircular apse and gabled ceiling. Among the most interesting testimonies, the holy water stoup in marble and alabaster obtained from an Etruscan funerary stone. On the right wall of the churchyard there are ancient engravings among which the one related to the foundation of the cloister (XIII century) and the funerary ones of abbots among which the Count Tancredi, of the noble family Della Gherardesca.

Very suggestive is the entrance to the monastery through a steep covered staircase that leads to the church in Romanesque style with a single nave and a Latin cross. Between the church and the houses there is still the cistern (1280), around which the monastic life took place. The cistern was surrounded by the cloister, on which the rooms of the monastic life overlooked.

The whole complex is still used today as a farm and houses. The abbey hosts a beautiful living crib during Christmas time.