Montemonaco, in the upper Aso valley<\/b>, rises to 988 metres above sea level and is the highest municipality in the Piceno area<\/b>. Probably founded by a group of Benedictine monks<\/b> in the eighth century, Montemonaco is a small fortified village deep in the Monti Sibillini National Park<\/b>, whose history is often a mixture of legend and reality.<\/p>\n
Within the fortified walls there are the fifteenth-century church of San Biagio<\/b> and the sixteenth-century church of San Benedetto<\/b> with a monumental portal.<\/p>\n
The list of churches continues outside the centre, in the hamlets<\/b> of Isola San Biagio<\/b> and Vallegrascia<\/b>, with two of the most beautiful rural churches of the Marche, San Giorgio all\u2019Isola and San Lorenzo in Vallegrascia.<\/p>\n
San Giorgio all\u2019Isola<\/b> is a Romanesque<\/b> church founded by Benedictine monks in the ninth century, whose belfry was probably once a watch tower. The church interior has two aisles and sixteenth-century frescoes.<\/p>\n
San Lorenzo in Vallegrascia<\/b> is a small church with a tripartite sandstone<\/b> apse, made by Farfa monks in the twelfth century<\/b>. Inside, in addition to capitals with floral and animal motifs that decorate the crypt pillars, two carved sandstone slabs, dating from the twelfth century, represent the struggle between good and evil.<\/p>\n
Montemonaco is also a land of mystery and legends linked to a cave on the peak of Mount Sibilla that the 1410 novel Guerin Meschino<\/i> by Andrea de Barberino and the travel stories of Antoine de La Sale (Le paradis de la Reine Sybille<\/i>, 1447 ) describe as the access to the underground kingdom of the Sibyl, a woman with divinatory powers, a fay for some and devil for others.<\/p>\n
Today, access to the cave is completely closed following a landslide in 1955<\/b>, but in Montemonaco itself, inside Villa Curi, visitors will find a museum dedicated to the Sibyl\u2019s cave<\/b>, which uses artworks, antique books, scrolls and even a water slide that mimics the path that led to the legendary cavern to describe the charm of a continuous interweaving of art, history, literature, myths, legends and magic.<\/p>\n
Villa Curi is also home to the municipal historical archives<\/b>, which contain a scroll dated 1452, which documents the excommunication (later revoked ) of the priors and the entire community of Montemonaco for hosting knights who practiced alchemy and accompanying them to the Lake of the Sibyl<\/b> (better known as the Lake Pilato<\/b>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Montemonaco, in the upper Aso valley, rises to 988 metres above sea level and is the highest municipality in the Piceno area. Probably founded by a group of Benedictine monks in the eighth century, Montemonaco is a small fortified village deep in the Monti Sibillini National Park, whose history is often a mixture of legend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-territory"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youpiceno.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}