How Cassino was built and evolved over time

Almost nothing in Cassino stands as first built, and the reasons are worth knowing in order.

The oldest layer is the acropolis of Casinum on the hill, where a temple of Apollo stood until Benedict destroyed its image and its altars and founded the monastery over it. The ancient town below was deeply damaged by barbarian raids.

The abbey was then rebuilt repeatedly. The monks fled a Lombard raid in 577 and returned only after more than a century; Saracens attacked in 883 and killed Abbot Bertharius; Pope Agapetus II had it rebuilt in 949, when the Rocca Janula was also raised for defence and the town took the name San Germano. A large earthquake on 9 September 1349 destroyed the town and seriously damaged the abbey, and reconstruction followed in 1366 under Pope Urban V.

The last rebuilding is the one a visitor sees. The 1944 battle caused the nearly total destruction of the town, and Cassino was completely rebuilt in the post-war years — which is why the centre is mid-twentieth-century in plan and in material, laid out on the plain below a mountain that has been rebuilt as many times as it has.

The Rocca Janula, built for defensive purposes in the tenth century, still dominates the town between the two.