Rome to Naples and Pompeii - On the Highway of the Sun

The journey begins. 

The drizzle decreases, the light strengthens.  Soon the sun is shining, appropriately, as the bus is roaring along the Autostrada del Sole – the Highway of the Sun.

Passengers shed overcoats and covertly check out their fellows.  The guide abandons her mobile phone, rises from a nest of paperwork and relates stories about the places flashing by.  She indicates the Castelli Romani at the foot of the Alban Hills.  This rich agricultural area a short distance south-east of Rome has fed the population since the dawn of history.

But it is a modern achievement that inspires her proudest moment. 

Italy was the first country in the world to build Autostrada.  Building of these began in 1921 and reached a peak during the fascist era.  However it wasn’t until the 1950s that the Milan-Rome-Naples autostrada was built.  The upgrading of the system continues today.  What ancient monuments were destroyed to build it?  What poor villages flattened?  What would have happened to the highways of Italy if Benito Mussolini had not come to power?

The bus takes a detour around the perimeter of the monastery of Monte Cassino.  The guide now tells an epic tale of glory and adventure, of men of faith and honour and monsters with swords and fire, of destruction and creation.

In 500 AD, Benedict of Nursia disgusted by the immorality of Roman society, abandoned his studies there and retreated to a cave to live as a hermit.  He attracted disciples but problems with his first community led to his founding a monastery on the fortified hill above Cassino in 529.

At that time Cassino was still largely pagan.  It had been devastated by the Goths but a temple of Apollo survived within the hilltop fortification.  Benedict, in keeping with the history and future of the site, destroyed the sculpture of Apollo and the altar on which it stood and rededicated the site to John the Baptist.

Benedict never left the monastery and near the end of his life he drew on his experience and knowledge to write what became known as the Benedictine Rule.

The Regula Benedicti is a guide for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot.  It has become the main guide in Western Christianity for monastic living in community for both men and women, in both the Orthodox and Catholic and, since the Reformation, in the Anglican and Protestant conventions.

Because of its strategic importance on the road to Rome the monastery of Monte Cassino was sacked or destroyed and rebuilt several times over the next millennia.

The last destruction was on February 15, 1944.  During the final stage of World War II the monastery sheltered hundreds of civilians.  In three hours during the battle of Monte Cassino it was reduced to a heap of debris under which many of the refugees met their death.

The monastery, memorials and graveyards that today sit on the mountain and on neighbouring Mount Cairo were built in the decade after World War II, exclusively financed by the Italian State.

The tour guide, exhausted by history subsides beside the driver

Observer

29 December 2009

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