Monte Oliveto Maggiore

Despite fellow-tourists here, it's easy to absorb the isolation of this place, the silence that exists in the closed parts and in the courtyard when the last visitor departs. The men are left to commune with time. I leave feeling that I have read a complex biography, and I have. The scenes from the lives of the holy are everywhere in Italian painting. Each panel or fresco is a chapter. "Put the action into scene," my fiction colleagues tell their writing students. Sodoma and Signorellie were particularly good at that. - from "Bella Tuscany" by Frances Mayes. She is writing about Monte Oliveto Maggiore, "one of the great monasteries of Italy".

Signs reads: "Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (Abbazia di Monte Oliveto)
This is a house of God. Please dress and act respectfully. Thank you. No sleeveless tops, no shorts.