Italy
Sacra di San Michele
A thousand-year-old abbey growing from a mountaintop, its staircase carved through living rock.
The abbey appears on the summit like something between fortress and vision, its walls rising straight out of the rock face. The Stairway of the Dead climbs through raw stone worn smooth by a thousand years of pilgrims. From the terraces, the Susa valley opens toward Turin in a long green sweep.
The Sacra di San Michele crowns Monte Pirchiriano at 962 metres, guarding the mouth of the Val di Susa in Piedmont. It was raised between 983 and 987, and pilgrim traffic on the routes toward Rome kept it growing for centuries, the Romanesque church stacked over older chapels and their foundations. Inside, the Scalone dei Morti rises through the living rock to the carved Portal of the Zodiac. Umberto Eco drew on the Sacra when he imagined the abbey of The Name of the Rose, and the resemblance is obvious the moment the walls close around you.
Solo
Climb from the valley floor on foot and arrive the way pilgrims did; the staircase's hush rewards travelling alone.
Couple
Drive up as the ramparts catch the last of the sun, then drop to Avigliana's lakes for dinner; the abbey against the sky resets the scale of the day.
- Construction began between 983 and 987, and the abbey has watched the valley for a thousand years.
- The Scalone dei Morti climbs through bare rock to the carved Portal of the Zodiac.
- Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose grew from this abbey's history and setting.
- A footpath from Sant'Ambrogio below still climbs to the gate the medieval pilgrims used.
Agnolotti del plin, pinched shut by hand around a roast-meat filling, headline the valley menus below the abbey.
Snap grissini, the breadstick Piedmont invented, over a plate of toma from the surrounding mountains.
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