Sacro Speco (Monastery of Saint Benedict), Subiaco

Interesting facts

According to tradition, the young Benedict threw himself into a thicket of thorns to overcome a temptation, and the spot outside the cave is now a small rose garden.

Legend adds that Francis of Assisi visited in 1223 and grafted roses onto those same thorn bushes.

Gregory the Great's Dialogues relate that Benedict left the cave to become abbot at nearby Vicovaro, but the monks rejected him and he returned to Subiaco.

The lower church was built over the cave in the late 12th century, and the upper church was added on top of it in the mid-14th century.

The oldest painting in the complex, a Byzantine fresco fragment of the eighth century, survives in the so-called Grotto of the Shepherds.

In his portrait here, Francis holds a scroll wishing peace to the house; its painter has been linked to a master of the Anagni Cathedral crypt.

A steep stair called the Scala Santa links the Grotto of the Shepherds with Benedict's cave; nearby, a 14th-century Triumph of Death shows Death on horseback.

Antonio Raggi, who carved the statue of Benedict in the cave in 1657, was a pupil of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The lower church's scenes from Benedict's life carry the signature of the 13th-century Roman painter Magister Conxolus.

Why it is worth it

The Monastery of Saint Benedict at Subiaco, better known as the Sacro Speco or Holy Cave, hangs on the face of Monte Taleo above the valley of the Aniene. Built into the curve of a vast rock wall and propped up by nine tall arches, some of them pointed, it grew over the cave where the young Benedict of Nursia lived as a hermit, and inside it unfolds as a maze of chapels, stairs and small churches, many of them cut from the living rock and covered from floor to vault in frescoes.

According to tradition, Benedict withdrew from the world as a youth around the end of the fifth century and spent three years in a cave above the river, fed by a monk named Romanus who lowered food to him. From Subiaco he went on to found twelve small monasteries, and the experience shaped the rule and organisation of the Benedictine order. The great abbey of Saint Scholastica, which still stands lower down the valley, flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in the thirteenth century a sanctuary was raised over Benedict's cave. Today the monastery consists of two churches set one above the other and a sequence of chapels that follow the shape of the cliff; the lower church encloses the grotto itself. A small community of monks lives at the Sacro Speco, linked to the abbey of Saint Scholastica.

The frescoes span several centuries. The earliest are attributed to the eighth century, and the lower church holds work by Roman painters of the thirteenth century, including a Master Consolus. The upper church is painted with Sienese cycles of the early fourteenth century and later work of the Umbrian and Marche schools, around three main themes: the Passion of Christ, the life of the Virgin and the life of Saint Benedict. The most famous single image is a portrait of Francis of Assisi shown without stigmata or halo, considered the oldest and most faithful depiction of him; an inscription naming Cardinal Ugolino, the future Pope Gregory IX, places it in the late 1220s. A large statue of Saint Benedict by Antonio Raggi dates from 1657. Subiaco itself, the small town below, lies on the Aniene some 40 km from Tivoli; it is listed among the most beautiful villages of Italy, and in the fifteenth century it saw the printing of the first books produced in Italy.

Getting there

The Sacro Speco stands on the mountainside above the town of Subiaco, in the Metropolitan City of Rome. The nearest larger town is Colleferro, about 23 km away, and the nearest airport is Rome Ciampino (CIA), about 45 km away.

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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