A short “City Bus” ride or walk from Porta San Giovani, far away from the packs of international visitors… sleeps the Monastery of San Girolamo. Run by the cloistered Vallombrosane order of female monks, it was initially founded by Santa Berta in 1075.

Today, Sister Maddalena from Padova who entered the community in 1975, takes care of greeting overnight guests, travelers and pilgrims alike, according to the typically Benedictine style of hospitality: with kindness and welcoming “as if they were Christ Himself.”

An easy-going woman in her mid 50s, she explains that there are no paintings in the monastery because people “only really need the essential.” The essential here includes astonishingly clean and crisp white sheets, so soft they could be made of silk, and floors that literally pass the “white sock test”.

Secret tip: A couple meters from the wooden door of the “foresteria,” (where guests stay), is the dusty 12th century Church of San Jacopo, founded by the Templar Knights. Ask Sister Maddalena all about it… she just might slip you the keys, shhh!