Monastery of San Colombano

Monastery of San Colombano once a powerful priory dependent on the monastery of Bobbio with immense properties on Lake Garda

Monastery of San Colombano has ancient origins, probably built as a point of collection of revenue from the various possessions that the monastery of Bobbio had on Lake Garda from the ninth century; a church of San Colombano on the hills of Bardolino is mentioned in the “Breve recordationis de Terris Ecclesiae Sancti Columbani” of the second half of the twelfth century. Monasterial church linked to the events of the priory, entrusted in the fifteenth century and then incorporated into the possessions of the Camaldolesi of Monte San Giorgio, which restructured it in the mid-eighteenth century and left its function until the nineteenth century when, by Napoleonic decree, monasteries were suppressed along with their properties. In 1812 it was mentioned in the pastoral visit as property of the royal Demanio, but left open to the faithful; in 1833 another pastoral visit declared her property of the noble Morando (acquisition “de jure”), with several provisions for its arrangement, but still accessible to the faithful; in 1844 another visit declared it in complete disorder. The building, after the restructuring of the Camaldolesi, has a gabled façade with a triangular pediment, in the tympanum a small eye and another of greater dimensions in the middle of the façade, above the entrance door; two rectangular windows are at the side of the entrance. On the south side the wall is in white and red stripes with a small bell gable. Inside the building has only one small nave with a rectangular presbytery and a single altar. Until a few years ago the building was in disastrous conditions.