Abbazia della Sambucina

Enchanted place ... Too bad having found it closed on April 25th ...

Superb place with a strong spirituality surrounded by greenery

Small church but really beautiful in its simplicity

Beautiful abbey ... Very suggestive place for those seeking silence and prayer Pay attention to the closing dates and times.

The church of Santa Maria di Sambucina presents itself with a complex history that is also reflected in its architecture, the result of repeated interventions. The current plan (a kind of Greek cross, missing the left arm, walled, and with a rectangular apse with three single lancet windows) is the result of the seventeenth-century restoration after the earthquake of 1569 which had caused the collapse of the aisles and the right transept. The church had thus been reduced to the apse, to the remaining transept portion and to the first span of the central body where the portal was set back. Thanks also to excavations that have brought to light some traces of foundations of the primitive church, it was possible to trace the original plan of Sambucina: it was a Latin cross, with a rectangular apse, still existing, with three naves and five bays. The original roofing (today in trusses except in the acute barrel-vaulted transept) does not agree with the scholars there are those who maintain that the naves were barrel-shaped and that at the intersection of the transept there was a tower; others had suggested that the same elements had a flat roof. Interesting are the observations made on the plant in which different discrepancies are found: in correspondence of the external right corner of the apse there is an anomalous masonry spur; in the left arm of the transept the back wall is not parallel to the apse wall; the proportions between the width of the aisles and the length of the church and the apse not aligned with the pillars of the central body. Precisely starting from this last observation, three phases of construction of the church are hypothesized: a first one regarding the apse, whose characters (rectangular apse, broken vault, three monofore) would be traced back to the Franco-Burgundian model of Fontenay and therefore within the first half of the XII century, a second extension with the transept and the central body and with the spur that would have been part of the back wall of chapels overlooking the transept; a third phase that would cover the transept archivolts, of a later style. The first two phases would have been prior to the first earthquake in 1184. The enlargement in the second phase according to the scholar should have been more impressive than the one that was later realized (nine bays and not five, widening of the transept and retreating of the apse), but this hypothesis is based on proportional studies, according to which the "bernardino" plan envisages an ad quadratum module which is exactly repeated in the Cistercian churches and which in this case would not have been completed. The decorations of the transept arches are late (late 12th-early 13th century) and a sign of direct Burgundian influence. A hint to the portal whose innermost part (two internal pairs of small columns and the first two decorative bands) would be original, while the rest would be the result of additions during the seventeenth-century restorations. Finally a last reference to the frescoes. That of the apsidal walls represents the Madonna with the Child and dates back to the early sixteenth century, while the right wall of the nave shows a canvas of the Annunciation of the Virgin with angels and the twelve apostles which can be placed between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally, the sacristy houses a thirteenth-century tuff capital and a wooden cabinet decorated with inlays dating back to the seventeenth century.

Enchanting place from both a panoramic and naturalistic point of view, quite easy to reach by car. The only flaw all week closed except Sunday morning it is worth it if you are in the area to pay us a visit.

History Most scholars date the abbey of Sambucina, as a direct subsidiary of Clairvaux, around 1140, given that in 1141 it was a donation to the abbey itself. Documents also attest in the same area the existence in 1145 of a monastic complex, Santa Maria Requisita, which around 1160 is found as the Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria di Sambucina, a subsidiary of Casamari, and indeed the genealogical tables of the Order report Sambucina founded in 1160 by Casamari. The new community soon gained importance so much that already in 1172 there were the first two subsidiaries: the Novara of Sicily and Santo Spirito of Palermo. In 1184 a first earthquake forced some restoration work in the church. In 1421 Sambucina fell into command and at the beginning of the 16th century the decadence of the community began, aggravated by a second earthquake in 1569 which caused the collapse of a large part of the church and the complex and the abandonment of the monks who fled to Mattina, another abbey Cistercian. In 1580, however, it was decided to restore the buildings and the Cistercians already in 1594 were able to return to Sambucina, although the works ended only in 1625. In 1633 the abbey entered the Calabro Lucana Congregation and in 1780 it was suppressed by decree of Ferdinand IV who donated its assets to the state. Today the complex, restored in 1973, remains the church in the forms assumed during the restoration of the early '600.

Posto del cuore, the mother church of the Cistercian abbeys in Calabria and beyond