Eremo di Monte Corona - Umbertide
The hermitage of Montecorona is situated in an isolated location near the town of Umbertide. Founded in the 16th century, on the top of the 700-metre-high mount in a forest of fir and chestnut trees, it had always a close and deep connection with the abbey of San Salvatore with which it was connected by a brick road.
The hermitage was the center of religious life, while the Abbey was the seat of economic activity and shelter for the old and sick monks, no longer able to comply with the strict rules of a hermit's life. Construction started in 1530. It was dedicated to house the Camaldolese branch (the hermits of St. Romuald) that aimed to embrace the hermetic spirit. The complex, which consists of the eighteenth-century church with stucco decoration and housing for the monks, became lay properties by the suppression of religious orders and were a safe haven in times of war. Then it passed through a period of total abandonment until 1981, when four nuns of the Monastic Family of Bethlehem came to this place and began rennovation work. Nine years later, in November 1990, the nuns founded a new monastery to which they moved near Mocaiana, a hamlet of Gubbio. The monks of the same order have been at Montecorona since 1990.