smell
Try to imagine the smells coming from the basement kitchens that rose to the upper floors and the spaces connected to the two refectories.
One of these spaces used to prepare rich dishes is home to the prodigious 18th-century fireplace hood named “il fornetto” (the little oven), built atop the ancient lava flow of 1669.
The kitchen was one of the most important rooms for monastery life, a sort of factory that fed a large number of monks, like a small world of its own inside the colossal monastery.
touch
One of the most characteristic elements of the Benedictine monastery is, without a doubt, the strong two-tone colour of the main materials used to build it.
Try to touch a marble column on the staircase then one of the lava stone steps leading to the library, and you’ll immediately notice how different they are.
If you touched them you would feel an immediate difference between the two materials: the marble is smooth with no superficial imperfections, while the lava stone is porous and rough.
hearing
The life of the Benedictine monks followed the strict rule of Ora et Labora (Pray and Work).
The days were organised into a series of activities: prayer, work and study.
Nor were the monks exempt from prayer at night or early in the morning; they gathered in the night-time chapel, the “night choir”, and sang choruses and prayers to the Lord.
sight
When you think of a kitchen, somewhere clean and full of food, pots and spoons comes to mind. Perhaps for normal, trivial kitchens… because for the monastery kitchen the first thing that comes to mind are the colours of the floor and central structure; a triumph of white, blue, yellow, green and orange.
taste
The kitchen prepared tasty lunches and dinners every day.
In particular, the New Year’s lunch in 1785 had a delicious menu. Shrimp, swordfish and a soup of pasta and fish were prepared as first courses; cod and sunfish with a herb and anchovy sauce were served for the second course, followed by cabbage with tuna and eggs.
The dinner ended with a custard, accompanied by some fruit to finish, in this case apple.
With such a respectable lunch, tasty and rich in every food, you could say the monks were not lacking in anything at all!
