Overview
Originally Benedictine, the monastery was probably founded around 1140 by Abbot Sigismund under the title of St. Maria Requisita. It passed, about a decade later, to the Cistercians of Casamari, who renamed it Santa Maria della Sambucina, perhaps because of the lush oleanders growing in the area. It was with the Cistercians that the monastery gained notoriety: popes, Norman kings and Swabian emperors held it in high regard for a long time. Until the mid-16th century, when the final decline began. Moreover, in 1569, a landslide hit the monastery itself, destroying part of it, which was later rebuilt. Today little remains of the monastic complex. Of the convent church, the central part of the portal, the transept arches, the pillars of a little more than one bay of the nave and the rectangular presbytery with three slightly pointed single lancet windows have survived.
