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Charterhouse of Saint Lawrence (Certosa di San Lorenzo)

Charterhouse · Padula · Campania

In brief

Festivals and dates

Seven centuries of Carthusian history

The charterhouse was born in 1306, when Tommaso Sanseverino, Count of Marsico and lord of the Vallo di Diano, promoted and funded a monastery for the Carthusians on a grange, an old monastic farm, bought from the abbey of Montevergine and already dedicated to Saint Lawrence. Little remains of the 14th-century complex, among it the church door dated 1374 and the church's cross vaults.

Work went on for centuries. The most important transformations date from the mid-16th century, after the Council of Trent; in the 17th century the church's stuccoes were gilded, and the 18th century added frescoes and new uses for existing rooms. The elliptical staircase was the last work the monks saw completed.

In 1807, during the French decade, the Carthusians were expelled and stripped of their estates; furnishings, artworks and books were largely dispersed and the monument suffered long neglect. During the two World Wars prisoner shelters were built in the cloister garden. Declared a national monument in 1882, the charterhouse has been under restoration since 1982 and in 1998 joined the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Sources: Certosa di San Lorenzo - Ministero della cultura · La Certosa di San Lorenzo - Padula Sistema Museo

The life of the Carthusians

The charterhouse follows the plan of the order founded in 1084 by Saint Bruno of Cologne, which kept two worlds sharply apart. The lower house held the places of work, such as storerooms, granaries, stables and laundries, run by the lay brothers, friars without holy orders who provided for the community's needs and dealt with the outside world. The upper house was the realm of the fathers, devoted to silence, meditation and enclosure.

This division can still be read in the architecture: the monks' cells, the church's two choirs separated by a wall, and the lay brothers' refectory below the procurators' lodgings. The large walled garden of more than twenty hectares is still planted with vines and cereals, with hedges, fruit trees and circular clearings edged with laurels and cypresses.

The monastery is dedicated to Saint Lawrence, to whom the Montevergine grange it was built on was already dedicated. Although no monastic community lives there any longer, the charterhouse remains a place to understand Carthusian contemplative spirituality, built on silence, meditation and enclosure.

Sources: La Certosa di San Lorenzo - Padula Sistema Museo · Certosa di San Lorenzo - Ministero della cultura

Cloisters, church and library

The visit begins in the outer court, a large rectangular courtyard where most of the productive work took place, with a 16th-century facade in local stone embellished in the Baroque period with statues and pinnacles. Next comes the late-Mannerist guesthouse cloister, with a central fountain and clock tower. The church has a single nave, five chapels on the right side and two choirs; the high altar in scagliola and mother-of-pearl is attributed to G. D. Vinaccia, and the 18th-century gilded stuccoes cover a 14th-century structure.

Next to it are the chapter house, the treasury chapel and the founder's chapel. The kitchen keeps its stone worktables, the great hood and the old boiler. A spiral stone staircase leads to the library, with a majolica floor and decorated ceiling, which once held tens of thousands of volumes and now keeps about two thousand.

The heart of the complex is the great cloister, on two levels with a cup-shaped fountain of 1640, linked by the double-ramp elliptical staircase lit by seven large windows. Some cells display the contemporary art collection created through the exhibition «Le Opere e i Giorni» (2002-2004), curated by Achille Bonito Oliva. In Padula it is also worth seeing the early Christian baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, one of the oldest in the West.

Sources: Certosa di San Lorenzo - Ministero della cultura · Il battistero di San Giovanni in Fonte - Comune di Padula

Charles V and the thousand-egg omelette

Every year, in the second week of August, Padula re-enacts the welcome the Carthusian monks gave Emperor Charles V. According to an account first reported in 1640 by the priest and writer Camillo Tutini, the emperor, returning from his victory at Tunis over the Ottoman admiral Khayr al-Din, known as Barbarossa, landed at Reggio Calabria and travelled north in stages.

On 10 August 1535 he reached Padula and chose to stop at the charterhouse. The hospitality the monks offered him and his retinue gave rise to the tradition of the thousand-egg omelette at the heart of the event.

Sources: Carlo V e La Frittata dalle Mille Uova - Comune di Padula

Visiting

The charterhouse is a cultural site of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The route includes the guesthouse cloister, the church, the sacristy, the bell room, the treasury, the chapter house, the old cemetery, the founder's chapel, the refectory, the kitchen, the prior's quarters, the spiral staircase, a cell, the great cloister, the grand staircase and the procurators' cloister; the library and cellars are not part of the standard visit. The complex is accessible to visitors with reduced mobility, with ramps to most buildings.

An integrated ticket, «Certosa e Padula», combines the charterhouse with the civic museums, namely the multimedia civic museum and the Joe Petrosino house museum, and with the baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte. The town's museum network, Padula Sistema Museo (www.padula.eu), runs guided tours in several languages for schools and groups.

By car, take the A2 motorway to the Padula-Buonabitacolo exit. The nearest railway stations are Salerno, linked by bus in summer, and Sapri, linked by scheduled bus services.

Sources: Certosa di San Lorenzo - Ministero della cultura · Certosa di Padula - Comune di Padula · Visite guidate - Padula Sistema Museo · Come arrivare - Padula Sistema Museo

The place

Sources