Today was another day of leisure,so we chose to take the ferry across the lake to visit the monastery of Santa Caterina del Sasso, todays ferry was much smaller than the one we were on the other day. The Monastery has its own landing stage from where its a steep climb up the stone steps to the entrance of the complex. These steps are luxury when compared to the steps the Monks used.
The monastery and chapel sit on a narrow ledge about a quarter of the way up the cliff face with the chapel at the extreme left hand end, the stairs go to the right.
To get to the top of the cliff there is another flight of about 600 stairs, in 2007 they started to build a lift by boring a vertical hole 55 Mts through the rock and cutting an entrance tunnel 45 Mts long out to the end of the ledge, this took 3 years to complete and allows people with mobility issues to access the Monastery.
The small original chapel dates back to the 12 century and was joined by two other churches in the 14 century, Its believed to have been founded by a merchant, the Blessed Alberto who was shipwrecked in thanks for being saved from drowning. His remains are housed in an urn in the chapel and a replica of his skeleton is in the glass and wooden shrine.
Like lots of churches in Italy it is covered in wall and ceiling paintings and each new church although it encompassed the previous one has a different floor level.
The first building you come to after passing through the ticket office is the southern Convent. This at one time had a second floor as can be seen by the door up in the corner, it was also used as an Inn at one point in its life.
The ledge where all the buildings stand is reasonably flat there is even room for a wine press between the buildings.
The lift the monks used to bring up goods from the boat is a lot lower tech than the passenger lift in use today. We did climb all the stairs to the top of the cliff to visit the café and all the way down again. When we came to leave the landing stage was packed with teenagers waiting to catch the same ferry as us and as we waited more people arrived. Thankfully when the boat arrived it was much larger than the one we came out on and the school party held back until everyone else had boarded. Back at Stresa the rest of the afternoon was spent walking the promenade, (I keep wanting to type seafront but its a lake) and relaxing at the hotel.
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