MONTEVEGLIO ABBEY
The park of the abbey, constituted in 1996, covers about 1100 hectares, on the left
bank of the Samoggia and Ghiaia Rivers and includes the the first hills rising up
to the south and west of Monteveglio. These grounds offer a wealth of opportunity
to study the natural, environmental and historical-architectural facets of the territory
with a particular eye to observing the evolution of the relationship between man and
nature. The area immediately surrounding the the village and the abbey, the most significant
historical and architectural elements in the park, is characterized by a series of
diversified, natural environments typical of the hilly zones of this region. The arid,
sun-soaked moonscape of the badlands gives way to lush, green vegetation, sunny, dry
woods and previously cultivated fields, in the flatlands and even on the hillsides,
which still reveal traces of farm practices abbandoned long ago, in favor of the less
ecologically harmonius practices of modern mechanized agriculture. The Consortium
of the Monteveglio Abbey Regional Park, formerly the Center for Environmental Documentaion,
with a specialized library, a teaching lab, a room for seminars, courses and confernces,
is located just outside the residential section of Monteveglio, at the base of the
hill near the restored antique rural mill complex still called by its original name:
\"San Teodoro\".