Montecassino Abbey

About an hour North of us is the small town of Cassino, Italy.  It’s about half way to Rome on the highway and a common train change station on the way to Rome.  If you walk out the train station and look up this is what you see:

Needless to say, we’ve been very curious about it for over a year now.  The Navy Base put together a tour of the Abbey so we jumped on it quickly.  Most of the Abbey has been reconstructed a few times after natural disasters and wars but this tour guide took us down to the guided only access areas that survived the bombs and such.  Some walls still standing are from pre-Christianity era.  I will link to their website so you can learn more, click here.

Some photos from our tour:

The wall behind the statues is pagan-made, this room survived the bombs.

Most of this is Mosaic tile work.

the town of Cassino seen from the Abbey wall.

This Cathedral has been restored and many places are bare waiting for their commissioned frescoes to be completed.

Each of these stars has a precious gem in the center.

Some intense, beautiful staffs.

In the distance with the cross is the Polish cemetery where 1,000 soldiers lie from the war in 1944.

If you are curious, there is a lot of history surrounding this Abbey, for instance St. Benedict and his twin sister St. Scholastica are entombed here.  Please take a bit to scroll through the website.

This was a fantastic half a day trip including travel and we plan on going back to pay respects to the Polish cemetery and on top of the hill behind it is an obelisk we would like to check out.  We took the tour but it would be easy to go exploring without a guide, it’s very tourist friendly.

Plus, they have a mass every Sunday in Gregorian Chants which I may need to experience.

(Dad, this Abbey has a World War II connection you may find interesting,

click here for more on that)