Hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul

Enchanting hermitage inserted in a beautiful landscape. Unsurpassed hospitality that makes you feel at home.

Beautiful from the outside and with parking. I did not understand if you can visit and how.

Unique and enchanting place, overlooking the lower Valle Camonica and looking towards the mountains of the upper valley. Ideal place for a moment of meditation.

I came to do the spiritual exercises. The place is very welcoming and very suitable for events that have a spiritual background. The area where the hermitage stands is very beautiful. The beautiful view.

Beautiful place and the nuns who look after it very welcoming.

An Italian excellence in the historic Camonica valley, where the distant past of our land can still be felt, seen and touched. The hermitage stands on a peak surrounded by high mountains, already covered with snow, and enjoys a spectacular view. Its management is exemplary and the structure has private and public spaces that make it a hub for cultural activities in respect of Christianity.

One of those "places of the soul". Located in the middle Val Camonica in Bienno, the Hermitage has a long and troubled history. Recent excavations in the church have uncovered the stratifications that hide a reality that was unknown. It was inhabited in Roman times and later a very important castle was built there for the defense and control of the territory, a castle that came to light only in 2017 following excavations for the heating of the church. Probably a Benedictine monastery with the presence of Cluniacs still in the thirteenth century, the Hermitage was officially founded by the Franciscan Friars Minor, around the years 1228-30 by Saint Anthony of Padua, of which a modern mosaic can be seen on the facade of the church. It can be reached comfortably by car and has a large parking area. The Holy Mass is public on Sundays at 5 pm. The panorama is spectacular at any time of day and in every season, on every side because the complex stands on a rocky spur. The Portuguese Franciscan Blessed Amedeo Meneses de Sylva († Milan 1482), founder of the Armadeites, obtained the installation of his own cell in 1469 but this did not work. Briefly left deserted, he was saved by the community, which financed the restorations. Detached from the Milanese Conventual Province and united with the Venetian one, it was suppressed in 1770. The custody of the church was assigned to the famous Jansenist archpriest of Cividate, Don Giambattista Guadagnini (1723-1807). In 1770 the complex was purchased by the Community of Valle with the intention of building a section of the Lovere seminary. The attempts made fell on deaf ears, the buildings were abandoned. Of the large complex only a few ruins remained: the perimeter walls of the church damaged and unsafe, remnants of the cloister, the bell tower. A recovery project began only in the second half of the 1900s and is today the site of many spiritual activities. The Clarisse cloistered monastery was built next to the hermitage.