Discover Sacro Speco

The monastery of San Benedetto, also called the sanctuary of the Sacro Speco, is an old Benedictine house in the territory of Subiaco. It is built against the slope of Monte Taleo and consists of two churches set one above the other, with a series of chapels that follow the line of the rock face. The lower church encloses the grotto where Benedict of Nursia spent his youth as a hermit, in the manner of the desert fathers.

The monastery stands in the curve of an immense rock wall of Monte Taleo and is held up by nine tall arches, some of them pointed. Inside it is a complicated labyrinth of rooms, small churches and chapels, several of them cut directly from the rock.

The site chose the plan, and the plan is nine arches. There is no level ground here. The monastery sits in the curve of an immense rock wall on Monte Taleo and is carried on nine tall arcades, some of them pointed, built out from the cliff to make floor where the mountain gave none.

Everything else followed the rock. Inside, the two churches set one above the other and the chapels threading between them follow the line of the rock wall rather than a geometry, and several of the rooms are not built at all but cut from the stone. That is why the interior reads as a labyrinth: it is the shape of the cliff, lined and painted.

It accreted over seven centuries rather than being built. The grotto is the oldest thing and the only fixed point. A renovation is recorded in 854, another in 1053 under Abbot Humbert of Santa Scolastica, and under Abbot John V a new road was driven to it and the altars reconsecrated. The city of Subiaco built another road in 1688.

The decoration is the clearest record of that accretion. Byzantine work of the eighth century, the Francis portrait of 1228-1229, Magister Consolus in the thirteenth century, Sienese and Umbrian-Marchigian painters through the fourteenth and fifteenth covering the upper church -- the walls are a stratigraphy. Where they are thickest is where the building stopped changing earliest.

Is this the cave Saint Benedict actually lived in?

The lower church is built around the grotto where Benedict spent three years as a hermit from about 494, aged fourteen, supplied by the monk Romanus. The Benedictine order's concepts and organisation came out of it, and he built twelve monasteries including one at the grotto.

What is the Saint Francis fresco?

The earliest and most faithful known portrait of him, painted between 1228 and 1229 on the evidence of an inscription naming Cardinal Ugolino, the future Gregory IX. Francis is shown without stigmata and without a halo, because the Church had not yet canonised him. Pietro Toesca connected its painter to the Third Master of the crypt at Anagni.

Is there an admission charge?

No. Entry is free.

Why is it shut in the middle of the day?

Morning opening runs 9.00 to 12.30 with last entry at 12.00, and the afternoon starts at 15.00. The gap is in the published timetable all year.

Can I visit on a Sunday?

Yes, but part of the sanctuary stays closed on Sunday mornings so that services can be held.

How does it relate to Santa Scolastica?

The Abbey of Santa Scolastica sits about a mile and a half below the grotto and is the other Benedictine house at Subiaco -- a separate monastery, not part of this one.