The Mediterranean

Italy

Monasteries that have kept vineyard, herb garden, and kitchen in working order for fifteen centuries. A rule of life made of bread, wine, and prayer.

What lives here

A rule of life, still kept

Italy's contemplative life never stopped. In its monasteries the day is built around the hours of prayer, and the work that fills the spaces between them is real. Monks tend vines that taught Europe how to make wine. They keep herb gardens and old remedies. They bake, they make cheese, they copy and conserve manuscripts by hand.

A guest is received as the rule asks, welcomed as though the arrival itself were a small sacrament. You keep the community's hours, and you learn by working beside them.

Primary Tradition

Monastic life & craft

Best Season

Spring and autumn

Character

Hill abbeys and cellars

A note

The day follows the hours of the office

Where to stand

The places worth the journey

Tuscan hills and abbey - Italy · The Mediterranean

The Tuscan hills hold the great abbeys and the cellars of Montalcino. Norcia, in the Umbrian mountains, keeps a monastic community and a long tradition of the table. Montecassino, the mother house of the order, guards its library above the valley. The Trentino monasteries keep their herb gardens in the alpine air.

Monastery cloister and vineyard - Italy · The Mediterranean

Bread is broken here as carefully as a prayer is said. To this house they are the same act.

If Italy stays with you, a conversation can begin here.

An Introduction →