(An ancient hermitage with good frescoes.)

Open 9.30-13.00; closed Mondays. About 10km from Barontoli. Go to Volte Basse; then right and almost at once left. Follow the signs for Firenze until you see a left turn with a sign indicating San Lorenzo al Lago. Go along this road for a couple of kilometres (it ceases to be tarred about half way along); then left again up a rather bad track. For access, ring the bell for the custodian.

San Lorenzo was an eleventh century monk who set up here as a hermit in a small chapel. It was then on the edge of a lake (drained in the middle of the last century), hence the name 'al Lago' (on the lake). A small monastery was built on the site after San Lorenzo's death. All that now remains is the little monastery church, with the remains of San Lorenzo's original chapel in the crypt, and the old refectory. The church is heavily fortified, with great thick walls; it was part of Siena's outer defences against invaders.

The church is decorated with attractive frescoes by the Sienese artist LippoVanni, painted between 1360 and 1370. Those round the altar show scenes from the life of the Virgin: her presentation at the temple as a child; the Annunciation; and her marriage to Joseph, apparently by the same priest as the one to whom she was presented earlier. In the vault, on the sides, Lippo has painted a wonderful heavenly orchestra of angels, playing a strange array of instruments. On the left of the entrance to the chancel there a picture of San Lorenzo himself, with, below, some illustrations of the miracles which he performed; as often the case with Sienese saints and holy men, he had the supernatural capacity to fly like Superman through the air to spots where his miraculous aid was needed (cf. Simone Martini's painting of the blessed Agostino Novello in the Pinacoteca in Siena). The fresco on the right depicts St Augustine with his mother St Monica.

The refectory is beyond the church in the far corner of the little garden. In it is a fresco of the crucifixion by the fifteenth century Giovanni di Paolo, a beautiful work unfortunately damaged as at some point when a ceiling was built half way up the refectory right through the middle of the fresco.

The custodian is a mine of information about the monastery, but mainly in Italian.

June 1995