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The Library of Vallombrosa already began to be formed in the nascent Benedictine community since its foundation around 1036, for the use and training of monks. Remarkable for the number of codices and the presence of the authors, the collection continued to grow in the Renaissance period and later, so much so that new rooms had to be built to contain all the book heritage really immense, as evidenced by an inventory-catalogue drawn up at the end of the sixteenth century and now preserved in the codex Vat. Lat. With the Napoleonic suppression of 1810, all the collections of Vallombrosa were seized by the French State and the result was a dispersion of the patrimony: most of the codices are now preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze and in other Florentine, Italian and foreign libraries. With the return of the monks to Vallombrosa in 1817, the reconstruction of the library was organized and it was then forfeited by the Italian State with the suppression of 1866. The current library was formed with the new settlement of the monastic community in Vallombrosa in 1949 and has regained all its ancient splendour thanks above all to Father Don Pierdamiano Spotorno, who with so much love and wisdom and with deep culture cared for and enriched it from 1957 to 2015.
The hall that houses it was built in the years 1587-89 and the current shelving dates back to the first half of the 19th century.
