Monastero di S.m.della Consolazio · IT

Monastery of Santa Maria della Consolazione

On a quiet road just outside the Salento hill town of Martano, in Italy's province of Lecce, the Monastery of Santa Maria della Consolazione sits in a green oasis of pines, centuries-old olive trees and citrus. A working house of Cistercian monks, it is at once a place of prayer, a guesthouse for those who want to slow down, and a small centre of monastic craft, scholarship and hospitality. The site is far older than the buildings you see today. Long before the current convent, this was a patch of countryside associated with Byzantine-rite monks, and the monastery rose in the late 1600s around a rural chapel to the Virgin that local people already held in great devotion. The result is a rare chance to step inside a living Cistercian community in the deep south of Puglia, away from the baroque crowds of Lecce and the coast.