It was on the acropolis of the ancient Casinum that Saint Benedict from Norcia founded his most important and well-known monastery, in 529. In this peaceful place, the Saint proclaimed the Sancta Regula (The Rule of Saint Benedict) adding study and manual work to the prayers, laying the foundations for all Western monasticism. 

In its thousand-year history, the abbey suffered many heavy devastations and four big destructions. The first one in 577 by the Longobards; the second one in 883 after a Saracens’ assault; the third in 1349 due to a violent earthquake and the fourth on 15th February 1944, when the Allies dropped on it heavy bombings to flush out the German troops who were defending the Gustav Line.

Since the Middle Ages, Montecassino’s Abbey has been a cultural center extraordinarily alive and productive, also thanks to the meticulous work of the amanuensis monks that gave birth to a famous scriptorium. The archive and Abbey’s library, declared National Monuments, save invaluable documents including rare incunabula and illuminated codes. 

The Abbey dominates “Saint Benedict’s Land”, the result of donations by kings, emperors, popes, and princes. The entrance of the monastery opens out onto the cloister, the site of the first oratory devoted to S. Martino. In the middle, there is a group of bronze statues that represents Saint Benedict dying, a gift from the German chancellor K. Adenauer. Going ahead, there is Bramante’s cloister in Renaissance style with the statues of Saint Benedict and his sister S. Scholastica. They are placed at the foot of the wide staircase which leads to the cloister of the benefactors, which contains statues of Kings, Popes, and illustrious people who were generous towards the abbey. 

Access to the Basilica is allowed through three bronze doors; the central one was built in Constantinople in the eleventh century and has a carved list of the abbey’s possessions, while the lateral ones, donated by the President of the Republic, Luigi Einaudi, were made by the sculptor P. Canonica in 1951.

The Basilica was rebuilt according to the original seventeenth-century design with many of the materials recovered from the rubble; on the inside you can admire the frescoes by P. Annigoni, which replaced in part those by L. Giordano destroyed in 1944. The main altar keeps the mortal remains of the Saints Benedict and Scholastica. On the sides of the presbytery, you can see the funeral monuments of Piero de’ Medici (1539), son of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and of Guido Fieramosca, brother of the most famous Ettore, hero of the Challenge of Barletta of 1513. Behind the altar, there is the seventeenth-century wooden choir, surmounted by an organ with over 5000 pipes. Underneath the altar, there is the sixteenth-century crypt with beuronese decorations, completely covered with polychrome mosaics and bas-reliefs, the result of restoration work completed in 1913. 

Passing through the benefactors’ cloister, you can reach the abbey’s museum; in the rooms, you can find the most precious traces of the artistic, cultural and religious history of Montecassino and the surrounding area, including the remains of pagan civilization, precious medieval manuscripts, sixteenth-century choral books, incunabula, sacred furnishings, engravings and paintings, including a splendid Botticelli’s Nativity.

Abbazia di Montecassino

Via Montecassino s.n.c. 03043 Cassino (FR)

Telefono: +39 0776311529

Email: info@abbaziamontecassino.org