Certosa di Padula: A Carthusian Charterhouse in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Naples, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page29 sections
History
Certosa di Padula, also called Certosa di San Lorenzo, is a Carthusian charterhouse in Italy, at Padula in Campania’s Vallo di Diano, founded in 1306 in the medieval period. It was the first charterhouse established in Campania and one of the earliest Carthusian foundations in southern Italy. The Carthusians, a Catholic order founded by Saint Bruno in 1084, combined strict enclosure and silence for choir monks with practical work carried out largely by lay brothers.
Foundation and Angevin Connections
Construction began on 28 January 1306 through the initiative of Tommaso II Sanseverino, count of Marsico and lord of the Vallo di Diano. The chosen land already contained a grange, or agricultural estate, and a church dedicated to Saint Lawrence. King Charles II of Naples confirmed the foundation later that year, and Sanseverino subsequently gave the monastery to the Carthusian order.
The new foundation served religious purposes, but it also fitted the political and economic interests of its founder. Sanseverino’s close relationship with the Angevin royal house made the presence of a French religious order politically useful. The Carthusians were also expected to help drain and cultivate the marshy areas of the Vallo di Diano. The dedication to Saint Lawrence continued a tradition associated with the earlier Benedictine church linked to Montevergine, which was demolished as the charterhouse was built.
The surrounding fertile land produced wine, olive oil, fruit, and vegetables for the monks and for external trade. The monastery also controlled routes leading toward the southern parts of the Kingdom of Naples. Its activities made it a center for collecting labor and organizing agricultural commerce, while the estate expanded through associated granges and fiefs in neighboring territories.
Growth of the Monastic Estate
When the Sanseverino family lost its possessions after the barons’ conspiracy in the mid-fifteenth century, the Carthusians acquired control of the surrounding lands and the settlement above the monastery. Income from taxation, donations, and commercial activity supported the charterhouse’s most prosperous period, which extended from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The monastery’s wider network included the grange of San Lorenzo at Sala Consilina and the grange of Santa Maria at Pisticci.
The charterhouse attracted prominent pilgrims and visitors during the sixteenth century. In 1535, Emperor Charles V stayed there with his army after returning from his military campaign in Tunis. A tradition associated with the visit says that the monks prepared an omelet made with one thousand eggs for the emperor.
After the Council of Trent, a major Catholic reform council, the complex was enlarged and reshaped. The sixteenth-century Foresteria Cloister and the principal façade were added to the medieval foundation. Major changes began in 1583 under Prior Damiano Festini and continued through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gradually transforming the original Gothic monastery into a predominantly Baroque complex. The great cloister, refectory, and monumental elliptical staircase belonged to this long period of expansion. The staircase was completed by 1779, shortly before the suppression of the order.
The charterhouse’s agricultural organization remained extensive. In 1771 it employed 195 workers, about half of them salaried, reflecting the scale of its productive estate and commercial activity.
Suppression, Reuse, and Loss
French and Napoleonic forces occupied and plundered the complex in 1806 and 1807. During the Murat period, the French-backed rule associated with Joachim Murat in the Kingdom of Naples, the Carthusian order was suppressed in 1807. The monks were expelled, and the monastery became a barracks. Books, gold, statues, silverware, paintings, and other works of art were taken, while 172 paintings were transferred to the Royal Museum in Naples in 1813.
The Carthusians returned after Bourbon rule was restored, but the monastery had lost much of its artistic property and its former regional political influence. Replacement paintings were commissioned, especially for the refectory, although the order never regained its earlier importance. Following the unification of Italy, the order was suppressed again in 1866, and the monks left permanently. The complex became a national monument in 1882.
During the First World War, the buildings housed an internment camp for Czech and Slovak soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army. The camp was also associated with recruiting volunteers for the Czechoslovak Legions. In the Second World War, the abandoned complex was again used as a prisoner or concentration camp. At different times it also served as a prison, a lazaretto, and a school.
Archaeology and Heritage
Part of the complex began housing the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Western Lucania in 1957. Its collections include material from the necropolises of Sala Consilina and Padula, dating from prehistory to the Hellenistic period. The Salerno architectural heritage authority assumed responsibility for the complex in 1981, and major restoration began in 1982 to recover the monument and adapt it for cultural and public use.
In 1998 Certosa di Padula became part of the UNESCO World Heritage property named “Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archaeological Sites of Paestum and Velia, and the Certosa di Padula.” The listing uses criteria (iii), concerning exceptional evidence of a cultural tradition, and (iv), concerning an outstanding example of a significant architectural or technological ensemble. Since December 2014, the complex’s historical and artistic patrimony has been managed through Campania’s regional museum system, later reorganized as the Regional Museums Directorate. The former monastery has also housed the European Landscape Observatory since 2008 and has served as a film location, including for C’era una volta in 1967 and Cavalli si nasce in 1989.
Remains
Certosa di Padula occupies about 51,500 square metres and contains approximately 320 rooms and halls, three cloisters, a church, courtyards, gardens, and service buildings. Its present form is mainly Baroque, although a small number of elements survive from the fourteenth-century foundation. The layout follows the Carthusian division between a lower house, where lay brothers handled administration and productive work, and an upper house, where choir monks lived in seclusion and contemplation. The plan is traditionally understood as recalling the gridiron used in the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence.
Entrance and Working Areas
Entrance Courtyard
The eastern entrance stands beside the so-called Church of the Women and opens into a large rectangular courtyard. This area was formerly connected with the outside world and was surrounded by working and service spaces, including stables, granaries, workshops, smithies, fishponds, laundries, apothecary and pharmacy rooms, an olive press, storehouses, ovens, and cellars. A seventeenth-century fountain by an unknown sculptor stands in the courtyard, with garden entrances beside the approach to the staircase. The outer wall also contains the eighteenth-century Tower of the Men-at-Arms.
Principal Façade
The principal façade belongs to the sixteenth-century rebuilding and received Baroque additions in the eighteenth century. Four sculptures installed in 1718 by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro represent Saint Bruno, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, and Saint Lawrence. Higher sculptures and busts represent the four Evangelists, the Madonna, Saint Anne, Religion, and Perseverance, and were probably completed in 1723.
Foresteria Cloister
The Foresteria Cloister belongs chiefly to the sixteenth-century reconstruction. Its marble fountain, portico, and loggia date from 1561, while the upper floor contains rooms for distinguished guests. Landscape frescoes decorate the upper gallery. The lower level has additional frescoes and nineteenth-century plaster sculptures of the Madonna, Saint Joseph, Saint Bruno, Saint Lawrence, and Saint Michael the Archangel. A stone Madonna and Child dates from the early sixteenth century.
The cloister connects with the clock tower, the Chapel of the Dead, former monastic cells, the Chapel of Saint Anne, and the Church of Saint Lawrence. The Chapel of Saint Anne retains eighteenth-century stucco decoration.
Church and Liturgical Rooms
Church of Saint Lawrence
The Church of Saint Lawrence preserves a monumental cedar-of-Lebanon entrance door dated 1374, one of the rare surviving elements from the fourteenth-century foundation. Its wooden reliefs show episodes from the life of Saint Lawrence and the Annunciation. The surrounding stone frame is sixteenth-century, and the door has been attributed to Antonio Baboccio da Piperno.
The church has a single nave, pointed arches, and cross vaults. Michele Ragolia painted the vaults in 1686 with scenes from the Old Testament. Neapolitan Baroque decoration includes gilded stucco, maiolica flooring made by the Massa workshop of Naples, and marble altars. Paintings by Luca Giordano, Giacomo Farelli, Francesco Solimena, and Paolo De Matteis were removed during the French suppression, leaving extensive white areas on the walls. The apse now contains nineteenth-century paintings by Salvatore Brancaccio, showing Saint Bruno, the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, and the Madonna and Child with Saints Bruno and Lawrence.
Choirs and Chapels
A wall divides the choir of the lay brothers from the choir of the fathers and the apse. The lay-brothers’ choir contains 24 wooden stalls made by Giovanni Gallo in 1507, with inlays showing saints, landscapes, and architectural subjects. The fathers’ choir has sixteenth-century inlays with 36 scenes from the New Testament, 36 scenes of saints and hermits, and 28 scenes of martyrs, dated to 1503.
Four eighteenth-century chapels line the right side of the church toward the presbytery: the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, the Chapel of the Ecce Homo, the Chapel of the Crucifix, and the Chapel of the Holy Relics. The lay brothers’ Chapter Room contains a sixteenth-century prior’s throne.
Altar and Sacristy
The high altar was made by Bartolomeo Ghetti, Antonio Fontana, and Giovan Domenico Vinaccia. It combines polished stucco and scagliola, a polished composite material made to imitate marble, with hard-stone and mother-of-pearl inlay. Behind it, the rectangular sacristy has a barrel vault, maple and walnut furnishings from 1686, and a ciborium attributed to Giacomo Del Duca. The ciborium was sent to Naples in the early nineteenth century and returned to Padula in 1988.
Bell Room, Chapter Room, and Treasury
The Bell Room contains three openings in its vault through which bell ropes once passed. It connects with the Chapter Room, the Treasury, and the cloister of the former cemetery. The Chapter Room, which was used for confessions, has eighteenth-century stucco, a seventeenth-century vault cycle depicting the Miracles of Christ, and a painting of the Madonna with Saints Lawrence and Bruno attributed to Ippolito Borghese. Eighteenth-century stone statues of Saint John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Joseph complete the room’s decoration.
The Treasury has Baroque stucco, a seventeenth-century vault fresco of the Fall of the Rebel Angels, and walnut furniture with olive-root inlay that once stored the charterhouse treasury.
Cemeteries and Refectory
Former Cemetery Cloister
The cloister of the former cemetery was created in the first half of the eighteenth century by transforming the lay brothers’ cemetery of 1552. It contains funerary plaques, tombstones, sculptures, reliefs, inscriptions, niches, stucco, masks, and other funerary decoration. The cemetery’s function was later superseded by the cemetery in the great cloister.
Founder’s Chapel
The Founder’s Chapel opens from the former cemetery cloister and contains the tomb of Tommaso Sanseverino. Associated with the circle of Diego de Siloé, the monument represents Sanseverino as a sleeping warrior above a sarcophagus bearing the Sanseverino arms. A marble frame with a Madonna and Child completes the tomb.
Great Refectory
The rectangular refectory belongs to the eighteenth-century expansion. It contains 61 walnut stalls, a mural of the Marriage at Cana painted by Francesco D’Elia in 1749, and a marble pulpit supported by an eagle. Reliefs on the pulpit depict the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence and the Death of Saint Bruno. A polychrome marble floor covers the room.
Refectory Cloister
The small Refectory Cloister retains terracotta paving and a maiolica panel showing Aesculapius feeding a serpent. The panel may have been transferred from another part of the monastery that was later destroyed.
Kitchen, Cellars, and Administration
Kitchen and Cellars
The present kitchen arrangement dates from the eighteenth century. Its principal feature is a large central hood over a central furnace, with maiolica tiles decorating the base. A fresco of the Deposition of Christ on the rear wall, dated either 1650 or 1652 and signed “Anellus Maurus,” indicates that the room had earlier served as a chapter room or refectory.
The cellars beneath the kitchen stored wine and retain a late-eighteenth-century wine press. They also contain a stone inscription found at Consilinum and dedicated to the pagan deity Attis. In the small kitchen cloister, a central stone basin was used to ferment the monks’ wine.
Procurators’ Cloister and Library
The Procurators’ Cloister is an eighteenth-century structure associated with Ferdinando Sanfelice. Its portico surrounds a fountain made of Padula stone and decorated with a dolphin and other animals. The upper corridor led to the procurators’ rooms and the former monastic library.
The library was intended for the prior’s exclusive use and once held about 20,000 volumes. Approximately one tenth of the collection remains in its walnut bookcases, while the rest is dispersed or held by the National Library of Naples. The entrance is reached by a small mid-fifteenth-century stone spiral staircase of about 38 monolithic steps, which makes roughly one and a half turns.
The library has an eighteenth-century maiolica floor by Donato and Giuseppe Massa, walnut shelving, and a ceiling painting dated 1763 and attributed to Giovanni or Leonardo Olivieri. The painting includes Aurora with her chariot, the Last Judgment, and an Allegory of Science. Wall frescoes are attributed to Filippo Pascale and dated 1769.
Prior’s Apartment
The prior’s apartment occupies about ten rooms on the southern side of the complex. Its private Chapel of Saint Michael the Archangel has eighteenth-century Baroque stucco, furnishings, and frescoes attributed to Alessio D’Elia. It also contains a wooden statue of the archangel made by Michele Feriello in 1649.
An eighteenth-century rectangular cloister connected with the southern gardens forms part of the apartment. Its loggia has a coffered ceiling and marine landscape frescoes attributed to Domenico Gargiulo. A stone Madonna and Child stands above a fountain in a niche, and another eighteenth-century fountain is located near the garden gate.
Great Cloister and Monastic Cells
Porticoes and Cells
The great cloister was begun in 1583. Its lower section was completed during the first half of the seventeenth century, while the upper section belongs to the eighteenth century. It links the secluded monastic areas with those used for contact with the outside world. Measuring approximately 104 by 149 to 150 metres, it covers roughly 15,000 square metres. Two levels of porticoes rest on 84 stone pillars with round arches, and reliefs of religious founders, saints, and angels decorate the portico areas.
The upper gallery served as the choir monks’ weekly walking route, while the lower level gave access to their cells. There are 26 Carthusian cells, each composed of several rooms and a loggia opening onto a small garden. Food was passed through small windows along the cloister walls.
Garden and Cemetery
Four paths cross the central garden, which contains a fountain dated 1640. The monks’ cemetery occupies the eastern side and is enclosed by a balustrade carved in 1729 with skulls and other symbols of death. Its design was based on an earlier plan by Cosimo Fanzago.
Elliptical Staircase
At the western end of the great cloister, a monumental elliptical staircase is enclosed externally by an octagonal tower. The double-ramp structure leads to the upper gallery and was built between approximately 1763 and 1779. Its execution is attributed to Gaetano Barba, while its design has been attributed to Ferdinando Sanfelice.
The staircase is built of Padula stone and bears the charterhouse emblem, composed of a bishop’s mitre, a marquis’s crown, a pastoral staff, Saint Lawrence’s gridiron, and a torch. The torch’s upward or downward position symbolized good fortune or misery. Seven windows in the surrounding tower open toward the Italian garden.
Gardens and Estate
Gardens extend around the monastery within its outer walls. Behind the monumental staircase is the desertum, an eighteenth-century Italian garden used by the cloistered monks and the prior during permitted outings, especially on feast days. It formerly contained more paths, orchards, and vineyards.
The gardens also include sacred niches, fountains, a chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene, and an eighteenth-century monument to Saint Bruno. The wider monastic estate covered approximately 20 hectares devoted to medicinal plants, cereals, vegetables, and fruit, linking the cultivated landscape with the charterhouse’s religious and economic organization.
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