Monte Cassino

You could say you were gambling in going to Monte Cassino Saturday.  With rain coming in all week, you didn’t know what weather you’d get.  We certainly were gamboling up the serpentine road leading up from the town to the ancient yet brand new monastery—where we discovered we were both above and inside the clouds.

Dating to the 6th century, Monte Cassino is ground zero for monasticism, with Benedict founding the first western order there.  It became ground zero again in the 20th century, when the Allies bombed it back to the stone age as they came north toward Rome.

So today’s structure was rebuilt after the war replicating the earlier layout.  But with electric lights.