“Finding myself with some free time from my ordinary occupations I decided to take myself off to Sesto within the week. I found a well built-on land with an abbey in the shape of a castle, with gates, towers and a moat with perennially flowing water”. These are the words of Angelo Maria Cortinovis in 1798 to describe St Mary’s Abbey, founded by the Lombards. 

It is a place which speaks the language of beauty, which creeps up on its visitors a little at a time in a surprising way, as if were inviting them to reflect on an enigma – that of “an abbey in the shape of a castle”, a fortified abbey that is, a building set deep into the special colours of centuries past and the nuances of the period. 

It is an abbey enfolded in the silence of the Friuli plains, severe, splendid and hushed always, seeming to whisper: “Come in and see for yourselves”.