Bobbio Abbey (Italian:
Abbazia di San Colombano) is a monastery founded by Irish Saint
Columbanus in 614, around which later grew up the town of
Bobbio, in the
province of Piacenza,
Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It is dedicated to Saint Columbanus. It was famous as a centre of resistance to
Arianism and as one of the greatest libraries in the
Middle Ages, and was the original on which the monastery in
Umberto Eco's novel
The Name of the Rose was based, together with
Sacra di San Michele. The abbey was dissolved under the French administration in 1803, although many of the buildings remain in other uses.