After leaving the Sublacense highway, following a spectacular rocky road and driving through a forest of ancient holm oaks, one reaches the Monastery of St. Benedict (or Sacro Speco/Holy Cave) which hangs to the side of a sheer mountain cliff high over the Aniene Valley. It gives the sensation of a sort of osmosis between building and rock, which the monastery is almost hanging off.
At the age of 20, appalled by the corruption and disorder of Rome, St. Benedict gave up his studies and headed for Affile with his nurse, where he lived for some time, supported by the local people's charity.
In Affile, St. Benedict carried out his first miracle. In an attempt to hide from the glory and fame this brought him, he retreated alone to a small cave, in the area below the Monastery of Adeodato. The saint lived in this cave for 3 years, alone “under the eyes of the watchful sky” (St. Gregory). When a group of shepherds found his cave and his fame started to spread, St. Benedetto left the cave and began his monastic life.
He built nothing close to the cave where he had lived as a hermit for three year; the Holy Cave is not counted among the 13 monasteries he was later to found. However, the places where the saint had lived were immediately considered significant, full of grace and prayer.. The caves became chapels and were decorated with paintings and frescoes that still exist today. Only around 1090 did hermit monks begin to live at the Holy Cave, 2 to 4 of them at one time. They would receive food and clothing from the Monastery of St. Scholastica further down.
The Monastery, a sanctuary called the 'entrance to Paradise' by Francesco Petrarca, holds two overlapping churches and several chapels joined by irregular walls, vaulted ceilings and staircases that blend in perfectly with the surrounding rock.
Of note in the Upper Church,the frescoes of the Sienese school (14th century), the floor and the pulpit, while in the Lower Church; Conxolus' frescoes (13th century); the Holy Cave (with the statue of St. Benedict by Raggi, Bernini's disciple; the famous fresco of St. Francis of Assisi (painted during his life time and without a halo); the Chapel of the Virgin with Sienese frescoes and the Shepherds' Cave where St. Benedict held lessons in Christian doctrine and which holds the remains of the oldest painting in the monastery, an 8th century Virgin with Child (8th Century).
Today, engraved over the entrance to the Holy Cave on a marble stone are the following words: “If you are searching for the light, Benedict, why choose the dark cave? A cave does not offer the longed-for light. In the dark, you must search for a blazing light: the stars can be seen shining only in the darkest night”.