Located 3 km from Ceccano towards the southern stretch of the Lepini, at the foot of Mount Siserno, the district called Badia took its name from the presence of the Benedictines and from its relevance to Montecassino.
This settlement is documented as early as the 12th century and originally consisted of a building with a chapel and a house for the monks who dedicated themselves to cultivating the land.
From the earliest documents it appears that the church was dedicated to S. Maria di Corniano and refers to the tradition according to which the Madonna appeared to a shepherd on a dogwood.
In the 13th century the structure was already called a Monastery.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century under the aegis of St. Paul of the Cross, the Benedictine religious community settled in the monastery of the Badia. In 1798 they found themselves involved in the French Revolution which arrived in Italy with anticlerical programs. In Ceccano the republican leaders occupied the building and dispersed the religious.
The Badia, therefore, was used as a barracks for anti-brigandage troops. It initially housed a detachment of Poles and subsequently of the gendarmes of the Napoleonic armies.
After the Napoleonic army was defeated, in 1826, restoration work on the structure was undertaken under the rector of the Abbey Father Sebastiano Amalberti.
In 1832 the works were completed and the altars of the new church were consecrated by the bishop of Ferentino Mons. Lais.
The church was enlarged and a series of paintings depicting the Marian mysteries and scenes from the life of St. Paul of the Cross were inserted inside.
The convent, on the other hand, was totally rebuilt with the current shape of a quadrilateral; the eighteenth-century pipe organ was restored.
In addition, the garden was built and the first bell tower was raised 10 meters high and equipped with a four-quadrant clock and bells.
Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, the convent housed the seminar of intellectual training in philosophical and humanistic disciplines for Passionist students.
Inside the church, in a chapel on the left side of the church there is the urn of Blessed Grimoaldo Santamaria who died in the Abbey of the Badia in 1902 and was beatified in St. Peter's on 29 January 1995.
The convent houses the library of the Retreat of S. Maria di Corniano, comprising 10,240 volumes and pamphlets, including ancient and modern works.