Grand Tour of Italy: Montecassino

Whichever way you spell it, Monte Cassino or Montecassino (the spelling used on our tour), it's one in the same place:

It's "a rocky hill about 130 kilometres southeast of Rome, in the Latin Valley, Italy, 

3 kilometres to the west of the town of Cassino and 520 m altitude." [Wiki]

[map from Connoisseur Travel]

Montecassino is best known for its abbey, the first house of the Benedictine Order, circa 529.

This is what it looked like from the bus as we started the climb up the hill/mount from Cassino.

Upon disembarking from the bus, we were greeted by St. Benedict himself,

the very Benedict of Nursia who established the order.

Once inside the walls of the abbey, we entered the first of several courtyards...

where another statue, memorializing St. Benedict's death, welcomed us.

Nearby, doves were enjoying the peace.

From that courtyard, we entered the main courtyard that takes you to the actual abbey church.

(I'm standing on the steps that take you to the church, looking back over the courtyard.)

I won't begin to tell the history of this place, sacked, rebuilt, bombed and restored over the years.

But you get the picture when I say it was a German stronghold during WWII.

Next to that courtyard was another one I stepped into, just to see...

and later at home, discovered this abbey is full of courtyards!

By now you've seen the 3 across the bottom of this 3D Virtual Museum image.

Now we climb the steep stairs to the courtyard in front of the abbey church.

It was exactly what you'd expect for an abbey church!

Expansive.  Ornate.  Opulent.

Can you imagine being a monk in residence there?

And then there was the crypt below...

As I often say, everything means something, of course.
Everything has its own story.

There was yet another courtyard adjacent to the church...

which you can see better from this angle...the narrow courtyard to the right of the church, I believe.

That makes 5 courtyards we went through of the...10 or 11?

[Wiki image]

From there we went to the abbey museum, full of artifacts.

Again, everything tells a story.

As we left , we saw the valley below...

and Cassino itself, the city below the mount.

"The Abbey of Montecassino is one of the most famous abbeys on earth,

due in part to its rich history of destruction and recovery."  

[Viator, a TripAdvisor Company]

I'm so glad we got to see it with our own eyes!
All of that in 1.5 hours!