Years ago I heard about a grotto in Alabama and I’ve wanted to visit it ever since. Unfortunately, it’s taken me several years, but I finally got there. The Ave Maria Grotto is located in Cullman, Alabama, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from the Atlanta area. The grotto is part of the St. Bernard Abbey, which also contains the Abbey, church, school, gift shop and a cemetary garden for the Benedictine monks who have served there.
The Grotto is the lifetime work of Brother Joseph Zoetl, O.S.B., a monk at the abbey for about seventy years. The grotto is located on what was previously a stone quarry. Brother Joseph began building replicas of the great churches of Europe in 1912. Over the years Brother Joseph created the replicas from unwanted materials found at the Abbey, such as ceramic tile, stones, jewelry, seashells, etc. The Brother even created the stalagtites in diffrent grotto scenes.
The grotto now contains not only the church replicas, but Brother Joseph gradually added other locations and building replicas of things, such as the Great Wall of China, the Lourdes Shrine, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Alamo, Bethlehem, numerous basilicas, temples and catacombs, scenes from the Holy Land, castles and other sites and buildings too numerous to mention.
The Ave Maria Grotto itself, on the lower level, is 27 feet high, wide and deep, one of the best examples of his stalagtites. The gardens, as a whole, take a two block path through a landscaped hillside and take about an hour or more to view, depending on how closely you look at the replicas. There are 125 small stone and cement structures, most created by Brother Joseph over the course of his monastic life. Some additions have been made at the request of the Abbey, by Leo Schwaiger since 1963.
I’m so glad I finally got to visit the Grotto. It was worth the trip. We added on to our day trip by also visiting the Unclaimed Baggage spot. That part of the trip asn’t worth the effort, although, depending on what you’re looking for, you might feel differently.
