The monastery clinging to the rock above Lake Maggiore
On the eastern, Lombard shore of Lake Maggiore, near Leggiuno, the Eremo di Santa Caterina del Sasso is one of the most spectacular religious places in northern Italy: a monastery built into a sheer limestone cliff, suspended about 18 metres above the water. Its origin is linked to a legend: in the twelfth century a rich merchant, Alberto Besozzi, survived a shipwreck in a storm by praying to St Catherine of Alexandria, and in gratitude lived as a hermit in a cave in the rock, where a church was later built.
The complex, enlarged over the centuries, consists of three buildings joined along the cliff: the southern convent, with a small cloister and a fresco of the Dance of Death; the small convent; and the church, which incorporates earlier chapels and preserves frescoes from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. There are splendid views of the lake from the portico. It can be reached on foot down a staircase of about 270 steps from the car park above, or by a lift partly dug into the rock, and also by boat from the lake.
Tip: arriving by boat from Stresa or Laveno gives the most striking view of the hermitage on the cliff; the site is managed by the province and is free to enter.
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