Casa detta La Cantina dei Santi

In a tangle of later domestic buildings, a single-storey, semi-subterranean structure survives from the Norman period: a portico with two adjoining rooms. The vertical fabric is of continuous masonry, with pillars of brick and river pebbles; the horizontals alternate between wooden ceilings, barrel vaults and sail vaults. This is the remnant of a monastery, now called Casa detta La Cantina dei Santi. Norman religious houses in Italy often combined local building traditions with the severe, functional forms brought from the north: thick walls, small windows, an architecture of solidity rather than display. Here, the vaults press low, the daylight is sparse, and the masonry is rough. It is a space that feels excavated rather than built, a buried piece of the medieval landscape now hemmed in by the ordinary life of later centuries. One imagines the monks moving through these low, cool rooms, their voices echoing off the brick.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.