I believe it was on a mountaintop. Not exactly a heavily populated residential area. The real significace is the fact that it was a holy Christian site that we bombed mercilessly because that's where the enemy was. If I'm not mistaken, we got permission for it.
It was the site where St. Benedict put his first monastery in the 6th Century, because it was an excellent defensive position commanding the road to Rome. I believe the original buildings were sacked and destroyed by Saracen pirates a couple hundred years later.
The oldest monastery in continuous use in Europe. Walter Miller, a navigator on that raid, wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz, the original "atom doom" s.f. novel, partly in penance for his role in the event.