Norcia Program

A Day in Norcia

Each morning we walked to Mass from Madonna Della Grazia convent, our residence just outside the city walls of Norcia. The 1,000 year old wall defines the size and shape of this community and provides a visual image of the Aristotelian polis—large enough to be self-sufficient, small enough to know one another’s character. 

Our destination inside the walls was Monastero di San Benedetto, where monks chanted the propers of Mass in Latin, while readings and prayers were in Latin. After Mass, spiritually charged but physically hungry, we made the steep climb back to Madonna Della Grazia.

Once “home,” breakfast was waiting, followed by meetings on the porch to discuss readings on the ideal and real “city,” the Rule of Benedict, or some aspect of Italian history. After a mid-day meal and siesta, the late afternoon and evening was a delight. When not touring a local site, most of us ended up at a café in Piazza San Benedetto—the heart of Norcia—in the late afternoon.  Here you can sit at a café table unaccompanied and still feel related to the world and people around you. 

Herein lies the genius of the Piazza: Like the human heart, it is the place of relationship — relationships of all kinds. For Americans who are preoccupied with what we “do,” it was a life lesson to experience the piazza as a place to simply “be.”

The time came for supper at Madonna della Grazia, then choir practice or reading Shakespeare by candlelight. But often many went back to the Piazza. All roads in Norcia lead to the Piazza, because, after all, the heart is the place to which each person must continually return.

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