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The Abbey is a Benedictine monastery located on the summit of Montecassino at 516 meters above sea level. Founded in 529 by Saint Benedict of Norcia on the site of a temple dedicated to Apollo, it has undergone an alternating series of destructions, looting, earthquakes and reconstructions throughout its history. In 1944 it was mistakenly bombed by the Allied forces who destroyed it, but the reconstruction that began immediately after the war aimed at an exact reproduction of the original architecture.