Abbazia benedettina del Maffei

In 1424, a Bull from Pope Martin V appointed the Veronese Maffeo Maffei, a young nobleman and wealthy man, as Abbot. He abandoned the ancient and decaying monastery of San Pietro to build a new Benedictine Abbey near the Parish Church, located on a natural terrace at the foot of the hill, now Piazza Mercato, expanding it and equipping it with a valuable cloister, today the emblem of the town.

In 1525, after various documented disputes over the payment of tithes, the inhabitants of Calavena obtained freedom from monastic feudal rights. However, during those years, a slow but steady decline began for the Monastery, which would lead it to lose its autonomy in 1529, when it was granted to the congregation of Santa Giustina Da Padova, which also owned the Monastery of San Nazaro and Celso in Verona.

It would be definitively suppressed in 1810 by a Napoleonic decree and subsequently transformed into a parish.

The building, with a square plan, rises around a cloister of which only the southern side, the facade of the current rectory, was completed. On the north side of the abbey complex stands the Romanesque bell tower, which conserves a single bifora of the bell chamber (damaged by the earthquake of 1891) and oversees the ancient oratory, home to the first parish church.

Over time, the upper colonnade of the cloister had been converted into a storage area, thus being closed and equipped with a chimney to avoid the freezing of the grain stored there. In the area of the cloister, traces of the tombstones from the ancient cemetery area can be identified, and on the southwestern side, there is a sundial engraved in the stone.

Inside the rectory, traces of frescoes dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries are still visible, as well as a remarkably valuable coffered wooden ceiling.

The entire complex has been progressively dismantled, especially during the Napoleonic era, when the cemetery area was also moved.