The importance that some monasteries had in the management of forests over the centuries has led some scholars to define the concept of monastic silviculture, meaning long-term management activities, carried out with technical characteristics linked to the vision of the forest typical of the monastic orders. In their approach to the forest, the various orders showed substantial differences, which determined the history of some forests, especially in the Apennines mountains. The Italian debate has mainly concerned two of them: the Benedictine and the Franciscan. For the Franciscans, who belong to the mendicant orders, economic activities were not as important as contact with people, preaching and almsgiving. Consequently, they cultivated and managed the forest in relation to self-consumption needs and not so much to trade. The Benedictines, in fact, developed an approach to the forest very different from the Franciscans, They cultivated the forest keeping in mind the needs of their abbeys, without disdaining the timber trade. A real organisation of forestry activities in a productive function should be considered a prerogative of the Benedictines, who were able to derive significant profits from the sale of timber. This aspect seems to reinforce the role of the order as a symbol of a culture and silvicultural knowledge developed between the late Middle Ages and the modern period, which is alongside that of major political entities, such as the Republic of Venice, aimed at managing the forest with criteria very close to modern economic silviculture. In this perspective, the monks of the Abbey of Vallombrosa seem to assert themselves as precursors of a type of silviculture that only during the nineteenth century, particularly with the birth of the Italian forestry school founded in Vallombrosa in 1869, was attempted to develop and proposed also at a national level. Vallombrosa is located on the Pratomagno mountain (1000 m AMSL), 40 km from the city of Florence. The foundation of the monastery of Vallombrosa occurred in 1037 by San Giovanni Gualberto, which gave rise to the minor benedictine order of the Vallombrosans. Some events occurred after the foundation of the forest school in 1869 offers an interesting case, considering the modern feelings on forests and forestry among urban population and the early developments of landscape conservation in Italy based on aesthetical concerns.