Beer lovers around the world rejoice because a new “abbey beer” is coming to town straight from Italy and the oldest beer-producing monastery in the world. The Montecassino Abbey was founded in 529 AD by Saint Benedict of Nursia and it’s the birthplace of the Benedictine order, but it’s also the oldest monastery in the world known for its beer producing activity – its beer was already famous throughout Europe in the 15th century.

The abbey was the theatre of the Battle of Montecassino in 1944, during WWII. The bombings completely destroyed the abbey (halting its production of beer as well), which has since then been rebuilt to look exactly the same, on the same rock in the province of Frosinone some 100km south of Rome.