Santo Spirito A Maiella hermitage

Santo Spirito  is the biggest and most famous hermitage in the Maiella mountain and even though was renewed and transformed during the centuries it mantains its charme because of its wonderfull position into the valley.

There is no precise information about its establishmen, but historians suppose it’s about the Thousand year.

The first documented presence is the one of Desiderio, the later Pope Vittore III, who stayed there in the 1053.

Celestino V, the Pope of the Great Refusal, arrived here in 1246 and after building a church consecrated to the holy Spirit remained for about 47 years up to 1293.

Around th 1310 and 1317 the beato Roberto da Salle was its abbot.

In his “De vita solitaria” Petrarca wrote about this place saying “one of the most suited place to spiritual ascetism“.

For the next two centuries the hermitage was completly abandoned and only in 1586 thanks to the monk Pietro Cantucci da Manfredonia the religious life came back. He built the Holy Stairway that take to the Saint Mary Magdalena’s oratory.

In the last years of the XVII century Prince Caracciolo di San Buono added  a three floor building and the guestroom.

Today Santo Spirito hermitage has the church, the sacristy and a two floors wing . Throughout a long corridor that rests upon a rocky wall one reaches the recently renewed guesthouse also called The Prince’s House.

From the Guesthouse, walking the Holy Stairway – a stairway entirely digged into the rocks – it is possible to go to the Magdalena’s oratory and to two big rocky balconies  .