The Torba Monastery is located in Gornate Olona, on the slopes of the hill on which it is located immersed in the nature of the archaeological park of Castelseprio.
Managed by FAI, it is part of the serial site "Lombards in Italy: the places of power", comprising seven places of architectural, pictorial and sculptural testimonies of Lombard art, and since 2011 it has been registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List .
Monastero di Torba History
uella of the monumental complex of Torba is an ancient story that originated in the fifth century AD, when the Romans built the walls of a military outpost against the threat of the barbarians, near the village of Castelseprio. Even today the guard tower remains as a testimony to the original function of the castrum, carried out also by Goths, Byzantines and Lombards and then changed over time.
From a defensive stronghold, Torba became a religious center with the installation of a group of Benedictine nuns who in the eighth century had the monastery and, later, the small church built. For about seven centuries this place was inhabited by this religious community, giving us the frescoes in the tower as a legacy.
In the fifteenth century the Benedictines moved and a slow decline began for Torba which led the complex to turn into a farm and, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to lose its religious function to gradually slip into a state of degradation interrupted only in 1976 thanks to FAI .
Today this millenary site with an important past lives again also in the light of the continuous findings of the Lombard age, which are only one of the surprises that the Monastery, and its territory rich in treasures of art and nature, offer to those who go in search of places outside the most well-known and popular circuits.