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The apogee of Monte Cassino
In the second of a two-part feature examining Monte Cassino, Richard Hodges examines how the monastery developed from the late 9th century onwards.
Among the triumphs of Abbot Desiderius’s ambitious building project was the steep flight of stairs approaching the basilica. Work on this monumental new access way began in the 1060s, as part of the abbot's great works.
The majority of Monte Cassino’s 500 tombstones are believed to date to the period before it was sacked by an Arab band in AD 883. Angelo Pantoni, the great 20th-century excavator of the monastery, identified two types of tombs. The first was excavated into the rock and approximately followed a human form, often with a base made of two or three tiles, each deliberately punctured to permit the draining of decomposing bodily liquids. The second type of tomb was block-
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