The abbey of San Colombano in Bobbio was founded in 614 by Columbanus, the Irish monk who crossed Europe founding monasteries, and it became one of the great centers of medieval learning: its scriptorium and library held hundreds of manuscripts, many of which later went to the Ambrosian Library in Milan and the Vatican.
The present basilica is Renaissance, built between 1456 and the early 1500s, and it holds Columbanus's sarcophagus, carved by Giovanni dei Patriarchi in 1480. Below it, the crypt has a twelfth-century floor mosaic of the Maccabees and the months of the year, and the Museo dell'Abbazia, in the old scriptorium rooms, shows finds from the site. A quiet, out-of-the-way stop in the Trebbia valley.
