It was on a stormy night in 1170 that the story of the hermitage and monastery of Santa Catarina del Sasso begins. A rich trader, Alberto Besozzi, was washed from his boat and was saved from certain drowning by the intervention of Santa Caterina. In a gesture of thanks Alberto decides to live out his life as a hermit in the caves built into the rocks, and during his years there he builds the first chapel on the site. Santa Caterina intervened again centuries later, wiping out the plague that had been terrorizing the region. And again in 17th century, when she is said to have stopped a massive rock slide before it crushed the chapel containing the tomb of Alberto. Some like to say the evidence of this last miracle is in plain view inside the small chapel where, over the alter, a large boulder hangs precariously, seemingly frozen in its fall by some invisible means. I won’t ruin the wonder by telling you geological reasons for the rock’s strange state; isn’t it still remarkable that, for whatever reason, here it is hanging impossibly. It’s the super-naturalness of the appearance that matters here after all.

Aerial view.