Tre Fontane Abbey

Legend accounts for the three springs (fontane) with the assertion that, when severed from Paul's body, his head bounced and struck the earth in three different places, from which fountains sprang up.

The half-dome of the tribune has mosaics, executed after cartoons by Giovanni de' Vecchi, and presented to the church by Pope Clement VII and by Cardinal Aldobrandini.

The abbey was richly endowed, particularly by Charlemagne, who bestowed on it the Isola del Giglio off the Tuscan coast, as well as Orbetello and eleven other towns with a considerable territory.

In 1519 Pope Leo X authorized the religious to elect their own regular superior, a claustral prior independent of the commendatory abbot, who from this time forward was always to be a cardinal.

The best known of this series of regular abbots was the second, Ferdinand Ughelli, who was one of the foremost literary men of his age, the author of Italia Sacra and numerous other works.

From 1812 the sanctuaries were deserted, until Leo XII removed them from the nominal care of the Cistercians in 1826, and transferred them to the Friars Minor of the Strict Observance.

In 1867 Pius IX appointed as commendatory abbot of Tre Fontane his cousin Cardinal Giuseppe Milesi Pironi Ferretti, who worked to improve the physical surroundings.

They inaugurated modern drainage methods to eliminate conditions that allowed the prevalence of chronic malaria, which had adversely affected local health.

In 1947, it became a shrine to the Virgin Mary who appeared to Bruno Cornacchiola (back then, an Italian Neoprotestant Anarchist, who planned on assassinating the Roman Pontiff) and his three children.