Montagna Spaccata and the Grotta del Turco site features

The Santuario della Santissima Trinità, also called the sanctuary of the Montagna Spaccata, stands on the western flank of Monte Orlando above the Serapo quarter of Gaeta. The park authority describes the setting exactly: a rocky spur of the mountain marked by two adjacent vertical fissures in the rock, sheer above the sea. The name comes from them.

The two fissures

The first opens into the Grotta del Turco, a few steps to the left of the entrance to the complex -- a grotto that ends directly in the sea, where the waves work on the light. The second holds the Cappella del Crocifisso, built in the sixteenth century on a large boulder which, by some historical accounts, broke away from above in 1434 and wedged between the walls of the cleft, over the grotto's sea entrance.

The staircases

Both are reached by stairs cut down into the rock. The Grotta del Turco was once visitable by a long staircase that descended all the way to the sea; the route was later shortened for safety reasons, though it still reaches the point where the reflections are the show. Going down towards the Crucifix chapel, on the right-hand rock wall, there is a Latin distich and beside it the so-called Mano del Turco -- which looks like the print of a hand pressed into the stone and is, the park authority says, a karst feature produced by rainwater moving inside the rock.

The church

Baroque, a single nave under a barrel vault with lunettes, with several side chapels. The quadrangular apse holds a twentieth-century high altar, over which hangs a canvas by Raimondo Bruno of about 1850 showing the Madonna and Sant'Erasmo entrusting Gaeta to the protection of the Holy Trinity. The sanctuary was built in the eleventh century by Benedictine monks, and its present appearance comes from nineteenth-century restorations by the Alcantarine fathers. It is held today by the missionaries of P.I.M.E.

The Grotta del Turco

The first of the two fissures, opening a few steps to the left of the entrance and ending directly in the sea, where the waves work on the light. The staircase down to it once reached the water and has been shortened for safety.

The Cappella del Crocifisso on its fallen boulder

Built in the sixteenth century inside the second fissure, on a large block that -- by some accounts -- fell from above in 1434 and jammed between the walls of the cleft, above the grotto's sea entrance. A staircase leads down to it.

The Mano del Turco

On the right-hand wall as you descend, beside a Latin distich: a shape that reads as a hand pressed flat into the stone. The park authority identifies it as a karst phenomenon caused by rainwater running inside the rock. The legend attached to it has a Turkish sailor, sceptical about the story of the cleft, laying his hand against the rock, which miraculously softened and kept the print.

The fault

What the whole place actually is. Regione Lazio's park pages state it without hedging: the famous Montagna Spaccata is a fault -- a rupture of the rocks with movement of the parts, the mechanism that also generates earthquakes.

The Raimondo Bruno altarpiece

Above the twentieth-century high altar in the quadrangular apse: the Madonna and Sant'Erasmo entrusting Gaeta to the protection of the Holy Trinity, painted about 1850.

The hermitage of Philip Neri

A stone bed inside the Montagna Spaccata, still known by his name. A long-standing popular tradition holds that Philip Neri lived in the cleft; he is one of a list of visitors the park records that also includes Pope Pius IX and the saints Bernardino of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, Leonardo of Porto Maurizio, Paul of the Cross and Gaspare del Bufalo.