The story of this place
Founded by St Benedict around 529, Monte Cassino was the cradle of Western monasticism, where he wrote the Rule that shaped European religious life. In early 1944 the mountaintop abbey sat above the German Gustav Line blocking the Allied road to Rome. Believing Germans were using it as an observation post, Allied bombers dropped 1,150 tonnes of explosives on 15 February 1944, reducing the ancient abbey to ruins—only to have German paratroopers then fortify the rubble. Four brutal assaults over four months cost tens of thousands of casualties; Polish troops finally took the hill on 18 May 1944. Rebuilt exactly as before, the abbey overlooks a vast Commonwealth war cemetery and a Polish memorial.