Subiaco: Where Benedictine Europe Started

Subiaco is a town of about 9,000 people at 408 meters in the mountains east of Rome, roughly an hour and a half from the city, and it holds two monasteries that between them contain a cave, a cliff face covered in medieval painting, and the room where the first books in Italy were printed. Saint Benedict came here around the year 500 to live alone. What he started here ended up organizing monastic life across Europe.

What is the history of Subiaco Abbey?

Benedict, a young man from Norcia, withdrew to a cave above the Aniene valley and lived in it for three years. Disciples found him, and he organized them into twelve small monasteries in the valley. Later he left for Monte Cassino, ninety kilometers south, where he wrote the rule that carries his name, and where our guide to visiting Monte Cassino picks the story up.

Of the twelve, one survives: Santa Scolastica, named after his sister. The other building, the monastery of San Benedetto, is also called the Sacro Speco, the holy cave, and it was built later, directly onto the rock above the cave itself.

The Sacro Speco: a monastery stuck to a cliff

The approach is a path through holm oaks, and then the building appears sideways, hanging on the rock with nothing under half of it. Inside, the floors do not line up in any normal way: you go down through chapels and staircases cut into the mountain until you reach the cave, which is small, dark and bare.

The walls on the way are the reason art historians come. The churches hold frescoes from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries by Umbrian, Sienese and Marche painters, layered one era over another, plus a thirteenth century pulpit.

One painting is worth the trip on its own. In the chapel of Saint Gregory there is a portrait of Saint Francis of Assisi with no halo and no stigmata, labeled simply FRATER FRANCISCUS, brother Francis. Francis came to Subiaco in 1223. The stigmata are dated to 1224 and the canonization to 1228, so a portrait without either was made before the legend closed over the man, and it is generally considered the oldest portrait of him that exists. It has been the subject of restoration work, so ask at the entrance whether it is visible before you count on it.

Santa Scolastica: three cloisters and the first printing press in Italy

Santa Scolastica is five minutes back down the road and gets a fraction of the visitors. It has a bell tower of 1053 and three cloisters from three different centuries, one Renaissance, one Gothic, one Cosmatesque with the inlaid stone the Roman marble workers made, begun by Jacopo di Lorenzo and finished between 1227 and 1243.

The other thing that happened here is easy to miss. In 1464 two German printers, Konrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, brought a press to this monastery and set it up: the first printing press in Italy. The earliest surviving book printed in the country came off it before September 30, 1465, an edition of Cicero's De oratore, followed in October by Lactantius. Printing arrived in Italy in a mountain abbey rather than in a city, because the abbey had the library, the Latin and the German connections.

How long it takes, and in what order

Half a day covers both monasteries without hurrying. Start at the Sacro Speco in the morning, when the light comes into the upper church from the side and the groups have not arrived, then walk or drive down to Santa Scolastica, which is calmer and where the custodian will usually show you the cloisters without being asked.

The visit to the Sacro Speco is done on foot, on stairs, in a building with no straight route through it, and there is no way to see it seated. Anyone with difficulty on steps should know that in advance. There is no cafe inside either monastery: the town below has everything, and it is five minutes away.

Nero's lakes, and where the name comes from

Subiaco is Sublaqueum, "under the lakes." In the first century Nero dammed the Aniene to make three artificial lakes and built a villa over them, of which ruins remain. The lakes are gone, breached centuries ago, but the valley still has the shape they gave it, and the river running through gorges is the reason the whole place feels closed in and cool even in August.

Can you stay in a monastery in Italy?

Yes, in many of them, and it is one of the few genuinely inexpensive ways to sleep in an extraordinary building. Italian monasteries and convents that take guests usually offer plain single or double rooms, sometimes with meals, often with a gate that closes at a set hour. Prices are typically well under what a hotel of the same location would cost, and some ask for a donation rather than a rate.

Two warnings. The experience is not a hotel stay: silence at certain hours is expected, and the schedule belongs to the community, not to you. And availability is unpredictable, since guest quarters can be closed for retreats without notice. Write ahead, in Italian if you can.

Practical: hours, dress, and how to get to Subiaco

The monastery of San Benedetto is open in the morning from 9 to 12:30 and in the afternoon from 3 to 6, with the afternoon closing at 5:30 in winter, between December and the end of February. Entry is free, guided visits are arranged through the monastery, and the last part of the approach is on foot. Shoulders and knees covered, as in any Italian church.

By car from Rome it is about an hour and a quarter on the A24 motorway toward L'Aquila, exit Vicovaro-Mandela, then up the Aniene valley.

Without a car, Cotral buses run from the Ponte Mammolo terminus of Metro line B in Rome to Subiaco in about an hour and a half. From the town, the two monasteries are a climb of a few kilometers: there is a local bus in the season and taxis, and in good weather people walk it in about forty minutes.

Subiaco makes a natural pair with Tivoli on the way back toward Rome, and it sits at the top of the valley that runs down toward the hill towns of southern Lazio. If you are building a route through the region, our guide to Ciociaria explains what is where.

Why go

Because it is the beginning of something, and because the beginning turns out to be a hole in a rock. Everything that came afterward, the libraries, the schools, the vineyards, the abbeys that held Europe together between one empire and the next, started with one man who wanted to be left alone, and you can stand in the room where he was.

Our journeys spend their days on the history and memory of this part of Italy rather than on monuments in a list, and the journey in Ciociaria takes a full day on the abbey of Montecassino, which is where Benedict's story ends. If you want Subiaco in a trip of your own, say so in Design your trip.