Cascia and Roccaporena, in the footsteps of Saint Rita

Getting there

In Cascia the motorhome stays down below, at the entrance to the town, and you go up to the basilica by escalator; in Roccaporena you park in the village and go round on foot.

• By motorhome from Norcia you reach Cascia on the SS685 state road as far as Serravalle and then the SR320 regional road, and from Cascia to Roccaporena you take the SR320dir regional road along the Corno
• Where to leave the motorhome in Cascia: at the municipal area of piazzale Papa Leone XIII, at the Molinella, at the foot of the escalators, open all year, with water filling and emptying; people who stopped there in 2025 and 2026 paid 12 euros for 24 hours. It is described among the stopovers on the Norcia page. For a visit of a few hours there is also the open space of the filling station in via Roma, two hundred metres from the escalators, which you pay for at the bar
• The escalators, the Comune writes, are open in summer on weekdays from 7:30 to 19:00, in August from 8:00 to 20:00, and on Sundays from 6:00 to 19:30. From 7 January to February they are closed, and the basilica is ten minutes' walk uphill. During the same hours there is a shuttle for disabled people and people with reduced mobility
• Where to leave the motorhome in Roccaporena: at the dirt car park of the sports ground, level, in the middle of the village, free, where travellers slept in July 2026 too; or at the places along the Corno river, at the far end of the village, on a slope. Neither has services; on Saturdays and Sundays the village square is off limits
• Without the motorhome: a bus runs between Cascia and Roccaporena. From 1 March to 31 October on Sundays it leaves Cascia at 9:30, 11:10, 13:05 and 15:35, and on weekdays outside the school term at 8:05, 13:05 and 17:30. From piazzale Papa Leone XIII a shuttle goes up to the old town at 10:00, 12:00, 16:00 and 18:00

Practical information

The basilica and the places in Roccaporena can be visited without booking; the monastery is visited at fixed times, with a guide.

Contacts

Where it is

Cascia · Umbria

You set off from

Notes

• The basilica's opening hours, read on 16 October 2026 on the sanctuary's page, which does not give the year: from April to October it is open every day from 6:30 to 20:00, and the lower basilica closes at 19:45; from November to March from 6:45 to 18:30. The page labels the two timetables with the names of the seasons swapped, and the information office confirms them by phone
• Summer masses: at 7:30 every day, sung by the Augustinian nuns; then at 10:30 and 12:00 Monday to Saturday, and on Sundays and public holidays at 9:00, 10:30 and 12:00, which from May to September are celebrated in the Sala della Pace, the Hall of Peace, built in 2008 for when the pilgrims do not fit in the basilica; at 16:00 and 18:00 every day. On the last Thursday of the month, and during the days of the novena from 12 to 20 May, after the 18:00 mass there is access to the urn, at 18:30
• The monastery: the nuns, about forty of them, live in enclosure, but part of the monastery can be visited with a guide, at fixed times. In summer every day at 9:00, 10:00 and 11:30 and in the afternoon at 14:30, 15:30 and 17:00; on public holidays with large crowds the visit is continuous from 9:00 to 12:15. In winter at 10:00, 11:30, 14:30 and 16:00, and on Sundays also at 9:00. The page says nothing about a ticket or an offering. You pass through the cloister, with the well and the vine that tradition says was born from a dry stick that Rita, as a novice, watered out of obedience; past the wall bees in the holes of the wall, linked to her first miracle; through the old choir, where she took the habit; through the oratory of the Crucifix, where on Good Friday 1442 she received the thorn on her forehead, which she bore for fifteen years. Then the cell where she lived and died, with the cassa solenne and the Baroque urn that held the body from 1745 to 1930, and then the wedding ring and the rosary beads; at the exit the rose garden
• The basilica: it was wanted by the abbess, Blessed Maria Teresa Fasce, with the offerings collected by the monastery's periodical, "Dalle Api alle Rose", From the Bees to the Roses. The facade is of Tivoli travertine, with ten bas-reliefs of Rita's life around the doorway; inside it has a Greek cross plan, with the dome frescoed by Luigi Montanarini, the bronzes of the altar by Giacomo Manzù and, in the saint's chapel, the urn of 1930 with the cardinal virtues on its four sides
• The lower basilica is the crypt, inaugurated as such on 19 May 1988: it holds the tomb of Blessed Maria Teresa Fasce, who died in Cascia in 1947, the chapel of the Eucharistic Miracle, and under the pillars the hall of ex votos, which can be visited on request
• The 2016 earthquake: after the shock of 30 October the dome of the basilica was damaged, the nave closed and masses celebrated in the lower basilica; the nuns, who had been moved out, returned to the monastery on 14 December 2016. In 2026 the sanctuary publishes the opening hours of the basilica, the monastery and the Sala della Pace as places that are open
• Roccaporena, the opening hours read on 16 October 2026 on the website of the Opera di Santa Rita, which does not give the year: from 1 April to 31 October the church of San Montano, the house where she was born, the marital home and the sanctuary from 7:00 to 21:00, the Scoglio from 6:00 to 21:00, the garden of the miracle always open; the lazzaretto is closed. From 1 November to 31 March they close at 18:00. Summer masses on Sundays at 11:00 and on weekdays at 18:00
• The house where she was born: the records of the canonisation process do not say in which house Rita was born, and the real one perhaps fell in the earthquake of 1599; the house you visit is a two storey building, from the fourteenth century according to Wikipedia. Rita's leather mantle, which women in labour wore for an easy birth, is placed by the Roccaporena sanctuary in the house where she was born and by the Comune's portal in the sanctuary: ask on the spot
• The marital home, that of the family of her husband Paolo, withstood the earthquake of 1599, and in 1629 Cardinal Fausto Poli turned it into a chapel. Inside there is the painting of Rita receiving the thorn, which the sanctuary attributes to Luca Giordano
• The church of San Montano, from the twelfth century, is where Rita was taught and married Paolo di Ferdinando; her husband and her two sons, Giangiacomo and Paolo Maria, are buried there
• The garden of the miracle is a small sloping patch of land, full of roses: tradition tells that Rita, ill in Cascia, asked a cousin for a rose and two figs from the garden in Roccaporena, in January, and that the cousin really found them
• The lazzaretto housed strangers, and tradition has it that Rita went there to care for the sick; of its three rooms two remain, with sixteenth century frescoes
• The Scoglio: at the top stood the "Rocca del Barone", the Baron's Stronghold, perhaps a watchtower. You climb by the staircase of the Way of the Cross to the chapel, where inside you can see the stone on which Rita prayed. Below, along the street of the shops, is the Grotta d'Oro, a hollow in the rock where tradition says she stopped to pray
• The Roccaporena sanctuary, by the Turin architect Oreste Della Piana, was consecrated in 1948, and the mosaic in the apse dates from 1967
• The Path of Saint Rita, the Sentiero di Santa Rita: the sanctuary gives it as 12.5 kilometres and six hours there and back, hiking difficulty, with yellow waymarks, a cross and an R. You start from the church of Sant'Agostino, go down to the basilica and below the Hotel delle Rose, then the path goes through the woods above the Corno river; after about 3.6 kilometres there is a compulsory diversion onto the SR320dir, a kilometre and a half of asphalt to Roccaporena, because the path is cut in several places. From the village to the Scoglio it is another 700 metres. At the office for pilgrims on foot, in viale Santa Rita 2, you collect the pilgrim's credential; those who walk one way only come back by bus
• The season: in summer the places in Roccaporena stay open until 21:00 and the evening is pleasant there. The busiest days are those of May, with the novena from 12 to 20 and the feast on the 21st and 22nd, which is on the Norcia page among the events, and the Sundays in summer, when the masses move to the Sala della Pace
• What there is and what there is not: written rules on clothing cannot be found; these are a basilica and an enclosed monastery, and you dress and behave as in church. In Roccaporena there are drinking fountains and paid public toilets. In Cascia the Museo civico of Palazzo Santi has an important collection of painted wooden statues, but its 2026 opening hours cannot be found on an official page. At the end of October Cascia holds its saffron fair

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