CAVES OF SAN BENEDETTO

After about 30 minutes of easy walking, you will find a sign of Benedictine hermitage, a where the Benedictine hermit monks retired to pray, a place also known as “the veins of Saint Benedict”. The hermitage can be reached via a convenient path recently secured by the municipal administration and the Monti Lattari mountain community and offers visitors an incomparable view of the Sarno valley and Mount Vesuvius, as well as allowing for a different look at the magnificent historic castle of Letters.

Around the hermitage a series of small natural caves were probably used by Benedictine hermit monks to pray, and in one of these even a frescoed chapel was built.

Unfortunately, these frescoes have not survived the neglect of time and acts of vandalism, but what remains of them shows that they dated back to around 1,000 years ago.

Professor. Francesco Di Capua visited the hermitage at the end of the 1940s and described the frescoes, at the time already partially damaged, but legible in style and, above all, some phrases relating to the author, the Benedictine monk Ioannis, perhaps the same one who created a part of the frescoes of the Grotta di San Biagio in Castellammare di Stabia.

Source: https://www.passeggisegreti.it/index.php/passeggi-segreti/edizione-2018/60-il-castello-di-lettere