San Benedetto Monastery

The brief uphill climb from the parking lot along the beautiful pedestrian street shadowed by the large, monumental holm-oak trees, which are considered sacred, is excellent preparation for the visit to this monastery, which is one of the most beautiful that you can see.
At 640 meters above sea level, the "Sacro Speco" or San Benedetto (St. Benedict) Monastery was constructed beginning at the end of the 12th century - and was part of the Monasteries of SS. Scolastica and San Benedetto; it was only in a second phase that the two were distinguished - encompassing the cave where the young recluse from Norcia spent his three years as a hermit.
The complex includes two small churches and various chapels and caves, all connected to each other by stairways and  hallways.
Clinging to the rocky face of the gorge with powerful structures that seem impossible, constructed with the usual calcareous stone, like travertine, which has taken on a warm, reddish color over time, the building has a grandeur and awesomeness larger than its dimensions, which are not even that big.
Powerful arches overlap, in these niches open followed by double lancet windows and narrow arched windows, then a lot of excitement subsides in the rhythm of the very large substructure arches that face the valley and in the smallest of the windows above.
This external complexity leads you to predict that the interior will also be complex; when you then visit the interior you will find yourself in a maze of various areas, connected by stairways and hallways, which appear one on top of the other, continually lit by rifts of light entering from the windows that look onto the valley and which continually associate the live rock to the construction it is attached to.
All of the interior is frescoed; sometimes the frescoes even go over portions of the rocky face with stories, legends, myths, in a phantasmagory of colors, some more vibrant, some more delicate.
All together it leaves you to be enchanted before even beginning to understand the history, the technical ability, and the art that contributed to the creation of this masterpiece.
Benedetto, who became one of the greatest saints of the Middle Ages, founded the Benedictine Order and gave origin to the very large system of abbeys that are spread throughout Europe; he was a well-off young man from Norcia, of the Anicia family, born in 480 A.D.
At the age of 20, he came to Subiaco and retired into prayer and meditation in a cave ("lo Speco") where he stayed for three years, until, according to some versions, is sister Scolastica came to him and urged him to leave his hermit conditions and to bring the young people around him who came looking for him, desiring his teachings, especially those from Rome.
In the years immediately following, Benedetto founded 13 small monasteries in that area, the cenobies, from which several traces remain.
After more than 20 year, for various contrasts with a certain monk Fiorenzo, Benedict left Subiaco and withdrew to Montecassino where, on the mount, he founded this Abbey that would become world-famous, as well as be a model to other abbeys in the Order.