Europe | Boomers Daily

From an Italy Magazine article by Silvia Donati:

If the nuns of Catania’s Benedictine Convent devoted all their time to praying, the monks of the adjacent Benedictine Monastery were said to be a bit more lax about their spiritual duties. In southern Italian author Federico De Roberto’s most famous novel, I Viceré, which is very accurate in describing the social and political background of Catania in the years that followed Italy’s unification, the monks are described as carrying out the “art of Michelasso,” an Italian saying used to describe someone who, well, is idle, avoids hard work and responsibilities.

Their monastery, known as Monastero di San Nicolò l’Arena, resembled a sumptuous noble residence rather than a place where to retreat and pray to God. It was also very big, almost a city within a city, located in a panoramic position with views of the sea and the Etna volcano on what was once the acropolis of the Greek colony of Katane.

The Benedictine Monastery’s wealth was an indicator of the power the religious order had acquired, in Catania and beyond. This is still clear when you visit the complex, a maze of rooms, basements, stairs, courtyards, colonnades and very long hallways, where architectural styles from different eras superimpose on one another.

From NY Times Travel article by Liz Alderman:

But as I stood on the archaic plateau, I was riveted. The broken columns of once-mighty altars rose like spirits in the pure air. A timeworn stadium and a prodigious stone amphitheater reigned silently over the mountain. The Temple of Apollo, where the Oracle dispensed her cryptic prophecies, was ringed with paths trod by truth-seekers who had labored up the steep valley from the Corinthian Gulf.

The peaks of Mount Parnassus shimmered on a warm spring afternoon above the temples of ancient Delphi. In a verdant valley below, silver-tipped olive trees stretched to the sea. The sun traced a golden arc in the azure sky. On a flat plateau surrounded by this natural theater, I looked up to find myself standing at the center of the world.

At least, the center of all things as the ancient Greeks knew it. In front of me was a black ovoid stone, known as the omphalos, set on the spot in Greek mythology where two eagles loosed by Zeus crossed paths at the earth’s nexus. It marked Delphi as one of the greatest enigmas of the ancient universe.