At the northern end of the town, the imposing mass of the Badia di San Giusto overlooks the Balze. The monastery was built at the behest of the bishop of Volterra Gunfredo in the year 1000; the building with all its properties was then entrusted to the care of the Benedictines, who were replaced by Camaldolese monks during the 13th century. In the early 17th century, the Balze landslide began, which in the following centuries came to threaten even the Abbey. Then in the early 19th century the monastery was temporarily suppressed by the French occupation government, but when the Camaldolese were able to return a few years later, in 1861, also due to the earthquake of 1846, they abandoned the building for fear of the Balze.

Today, the monastery is a single structure divided into two distinct parts: the church, almost destroyed, of which only scant remains of the perimeter walls still preserve the Romanesque structure, and the residential building, with the cloister, the refectory and the monks’ quarters, which have a more modern appearance due to the reconstruction ordered by Abbot Mario Maffei in the 16th century. The windows of the Abbey look out onto spectacular views of the village church, the Etruscan walls and the pinnacles of the Balze.
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