Subiaco has 9,066 inhabitants on the Aniene, at the foot of the Simbruini mountains. The name comes from the Latin Sublaqueum, «under the lakes»: the ones Nero had made by damming the river beside his villa, and which survive on the municipal coat of arms as three sheets of water. In the gorge cut by the Aniene, just above the ruins of the villa, a young Benedict of Nursia lived as a hermit in a cave before founding thirteen monasteries in the Sublacensian country for his first disciples.
Of those thirteen the monastery of Santa Scolastica remains, bearing the title of protocenobium of the Sublacensian congregation; above the cave the abbots built in the twelfth century the sanctuary of the Sacro Speco, which keeps a portrait of Saint Francis painted in 1223. It was here that in 1465 Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, who had come from Germany, set to work what was probably the first printing press in Italy. Between 1943 and 1945 the military occupation and the Allied bombings razed the town centre to the ground.
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📅 Every year, on 13 October
On 13 October Subiaco celebrates Saint Chelidonia, one of its two patrons alongside Saint Benedict (21 March); the town preserves the monasteries founded by Saint Benedict himself.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Subiaco, but an easy day trip away.
