Founded in the late sixth century, Farfa grew into one of medieval Europe’s wealthiest monasteries, its abbots at one point answering to no bishop but the pope himself and controlling, by some counts, over six hundred dependent churches and monasteries and more than a hundred castles across central Italy.
Saracen raiders sacked it in the ninth century, and centuries of decline followed before the Benedictines returned in 1920 to re-found the community that still lives and prays here today. The basilica mixes eras candidly: a Carolingian bell-tower base, a Baroque nave, and, overhead, Dirck Barendsz’s 1561 Last Judgment ceiling fresco. An altarpiece by Orazio Gentileschi and a working 1947 organ round out a church that still holds daily Mass for its monks and the handful of villagers who share their borgo.
