Our friend Massimo takes us to visit the suggestive Praglia abbey, lying at the bottom of Lonzina hill in the green countryside near Padua .

Italian National Monument, now it hosts the National Library.
From 1951 it is the seat of one of the most important Italian restoration workshops for manuscripts, books, scrolls, drawings and paper artworks.

This is a place that has absolutely to be visited.

A bit of history:
Its history is full of ups and downs and here we mention a short chronicle:
founded in 1080 for the Benedictine order by the Maltraverso family, it was then known as “Pratalia”.
Aggregated to the Polirone monastery in 1124, it became autonomous in 1304.
Commendatory abbey in 1412, from 1448 it passed under the jurisdiction of the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua.
Fully reconstructed in 1469, in 1490 the monks built the church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.
Closed in 1810 it was reopened in 1834 by the Austrian Emperor Francis I.
Suppressed again in 1867, it was restored to the Benedictine order in 1954.
24 September 1951 is a very important date: on this day the abbey became the seat of a center of excellence for the restoration of ancient books. For example about 2000 books of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence, damaged by the flood in November 1966, were recovered here.

For more info:
www.praglia.it
www.collieuganei.it: abbazia di praglia
wikipedia: Abbazia di Praglia

For the visits to the monastery:
www.praglia.it: visite

Thanks to our friend Massimo for the permission of publishing his images