Montevirgine: The Gem at the Top

I wasn’t expecting much on my second day in Italy. Still exhausted from a sleepless flight conjoined with a full day of meeting my husband’s Italian family over the course of 12 more hours, I lazily snapped some photos of the mountains from our hotel balcony. As a suburban New Jerseyan, it’s always noteworthy to step outside and see mountains. I knew we had plans to go somewhere called Montevirgine, but from my point of view I was blindly following my husband and the family we were visiting. I had no expectations.

Today we would be riding the funicular, a mountain train, up Mount Virgin to see the religious sanctuary nestled above the family’s hometown of Mercogliano, a suburb of Avellino, about half an hour from Naples. In other words, we were on a trek to see a church.

After a very short drive, we arrived at the funicular station. We boarded the little train and ascended at an angle more nearly resembling a rocket trajectory than an airplane at take off. Mercogliano quickly became tiny below us. The predominant roof color of the town is orange, a fact I didn’t pick up on until we viewed it from the funicular.

Seven minutes later we were at the top of the cloud shrouded mountain and made our way to the 900 year old sanctuary of Mt. Virgin. The modern interior section of the church was filled with visitors attending Mass. It was a plain room with white walls dotted by old wooden confessionals along the periphery. Each short pew seated four people. The background of the altar was a gold-toned picture of the Virgin Mary surrounded by worshippers, flanked by bronze statues of angels. The ceiling was comprised of a series of panels with religious symbols separated by beams. My overall impression of the church: basic, stark, but selectively embellished. The spareness of the room as a whole served to highlight the artwork.

In a side room we found the original church, which was classically ornate and exactly what I expected to find in a sanctuary from that long ago. This church, however, was tiny. There was a lot of ecclesiastical glitz in a small space. I mention this observation to my husband. His comment: How many people do you think were able to reach this place? Logical. If they made the original church bigger, who’d be trying to fit inside? Visitors in the Middle Ages had no roads or train access. They would have had to journey up the steep mountain footpath.

We doubled back the new church, built to accommodate a modern-sized crowd, and stayed for mass.

Now, a side note. This is definitely a tourist story. Before Mass, I hiked down the church steps, across the courtyard, and down two more flights to the ladies room. When I got there, I was greeted by, well, more accurately stopped by a lady holding a basket of Euros. There was a one Euro fee to use the facility. I looked questioningly at Antoinette, the cousin who accompanied me. Being a really good English speaker, she was able to explain the situation to me. She had left her purse upstairs, but fortunately I had money. I handed her a 5 Euro bill and she got me change. This was not the hard part.

I proceeded to a stall that another woman was leaving. She said something in Italian that I didn’t understand. When I saw the seatless toilet and discovered that the water in it wasn’t clear, I assumed the lady had warned me that it didn’t flush. I soon realized that there no flushing mechanism. Confused, I was going to try another stall. As soon as I opened the door, a woman with a bucket of water went in, added water and left. In fact, there were bucket women all over the bathroom adding water between users. I returned to the stall to take care of business despite my misgivings about the seatless toilet. I would soon learn that most public toilets throughout Italy are without seats. We are, I guess, expected to hover. Fortunately every other bathroom without exception had a perfectly good flush mechanism on the wall. This particular restroom was a throughback to another era.

Happy to be on my way out of there, I got stopped again by the basket lady. This time she wanted to advise me that I was trailing a ribbon of toilet paper.

Now we made our way back up to the church for Mass. This is where I had plenty of time to survey my surroundings, think about bathrooms, and study the man diagonally in front of me who looked like a younger Sylvester Stallone. I had time for all manner of thoughts because I didn’t understand a word of what was going on. I knew where we were in the Mass, but I had no idea what the readings were, what the sermon was about, or what was being sung.

Although I went on my Duolingo Italian app religiously for two months, it was very clear that I did not have the ability to understand Italian in real life. This would remain an issue for the first week of our trip, living among native Italians without having the luxury of subtitles. After the first week we would be going on a bus tour with an English speaking guide and a bus full of other English speaking travelers going to places that cater to foreign tourists. I was looking forward to it.

After Mass we headed to the museum that ended up being one of the highlights of my trip.

The Abbey Museum of the Sanctuary of Montevergine features portraits and busts of clergy past, a display is clerical garb, a case of chalices (think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and choose wisely), and beautiful religious-themed paintings. Of course, this is Italy so this type of art is everywhere. But, I saw one display here that knocked my socks off- the Nativity scenes.

These displays are different than the standard scenes we bring up from our basements every December. Yes, they include the tableau of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Wise Men, angels, and animals- exquisitely arranged. But they are set in 1800s Naples in a style termed Presepio. These figures are incredibly realistic down to loose skin under an old woman’s neck, missing teeth, 5:00 shadow, the little holes in chicken pieces where the feathers had been plucked. Each tiny sculpture is it’s own masterpiece. It’s my understanding the Presepio creches can be found in other displays in the Naples area. For me, they were the high point of the day and a springboard to a new interest for the future.