Travel in Italy surprizes you with a little but interesting peculiarity. There are many similar buildings and other architectural objects. There are many similar bell towers, 7 similar bronze doors, I don’t know how many similar ambons were there in all Italy -you find them in Salerno, Amalfi, Montecasino etc etc.
I’ll tell you the story of two similar churches today.
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Once upon a time (after 1020) there were 2 Benedictine monks. Both were from princely families, relatives and great friends. Both were monks in Montecassino for a short period. One of them, Desiderius, became later the abbey of that monastery, other, Alfanus, turned home, in Salerno.
The first built a very beautiful church in the monastery (photo over here) and the friend loved this work so much that he built a copy of that basilica in Salerno, too.
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Montecassino
The monastery of Montecassino was so unfortunate that it was 4 times destroyed (officially recognized) in it’s lifetime. After the battle for Montecassino during the World War II the only building remained from the monastery was the roman tower where S.Benedict lived when he reached this place. The Americans razed to the ground all the antique monastery with all the local people that run there looking for protection of the church.
Here you can see how it was:
Montecassino and Salerno
Only some pieces remained from the basilica of Desiderius in Montecassino that are carefully treasured in the museum of the monastery. Cathedral of Alfanus in Salerno enjoys the admiring visitors with it’s at least partially original (1085) beauty that was discovered thanks to bombardments of the city in 1944 when the barocco stucco used to strengthen the building fall down.
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And that is why the existance of copies is so useful:
They say, knowing that the churches were similar, the architects used the cathedral of Alfanus in Salerno as example when they reconstructed the monastery of Montecassino.
