The Certosa is a monumental church to which is attached a simple monk's cloister.
When asked what my favorite part of Italy is, I answer, “I’ll let you know when I’ve seen them all.” Which I hope will take a lifetime. Meanwhile, last autumn, I was delighted to visit Pavia, new to me, in the province of the same name, south of Milan, and also its capital city.
Today the once-walled Pavia is a quiet city of cobbled streets with a small 19th century ochre-colored train station on the Piazza Garibaldi adjacent to the narrow, pleasant Fiume Ticino river flanked by the long, broad avenues of the Viale Lungo Ticino (with its open market) and Viale Via Milazzo, so it is a fine town for walking and its attractions are easily covered in two days.
The Hermitage of Saint Albert is a mountain top monastery richly decorated with frescoes from the ... [+]
It began as a Roman settlement called Ticinum in 220 BC. From 572 to 774 Pavia was the capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards, whose religious piety effected the construction of many churches and monasteries throughout what came to be called Lombardy. You can get a strong sense of such a medieval monastery by visiting the Hermitage of Saint Albert, who built this aerie in 1030 for his followers atop a misty mountain. Its simplicity of size and design seems at first severe, but inside are a remarkable number of highly colored, anonymously painted frescoes, dating to 1484. Although abandoned in the 19th century, it became the cloister of the Hermits of Divine Providence in 1921, a few of whom live, work and pray there to this day.
The Lombards’ most famous church, within the city of Pavia, is
San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro (“Saint Peter in the Sky of Gold”), built by King Liutbrand, is also where ... [+]
San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro (“Saint Peter in the Sky of Gold”), built by King Liutbrand, whose foot served for the length of the builders’ unit measure. It is also where Boethius, author of the influential Consolation of Philosophy, and St. Augustine are buried. Little of the original church from the eighth century is extant, and its reconfigurations over centuries maintain only its Romanesque façade and the gold mosaic in the cupola, though all else is quite changed.
As with the entire history of Italy, Pavia was fought over and occupied several times. After the Battle of Pavia in 1525, Spain controlled the city for two hundred years, then Austria, then Napoleon, then Austria again, until Italy was unified in 1860 and threw out the foreigners.
The most eminent of the city’s structures is the Castello Visconti, a private home of Galeazzo Il Visconti in the 14th century and famous for its thousand-volume library (now lost, though digitally reconstructed from books located elsewhere). It is now a civic museum, with excellent works by Gentile da Fabriano, Ambrogio and Giambono. The most prized work is a Portrait of a Man, assumed to be its author, Antonello da Messina.
The battle of Pavia was fought in the former gardens of the castello, and remnants of its medieval walls are amplified by a series of impressively tall De Chirico-like red brick towers. There were once a hundred towers in Pavia, but few remain, like those in Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, Via Luigi Porta and Piazza of Collegio Borromeo.
Pavia's Duomo is the third largest in Italy.
Pavia’s Duomo dates back to the height of the Renaissance, but its cupola—the third largest in Italy—was not added until 1884. As with all Italian cities, churches abound in Pavia. Santa Maria del Carmine is a fine, brickwork Gothic church, and Santa Maria di Canepanova is distinguished for its octagonal design by the great Bramante, who’d planned the layout of St. Peter’s in Rome.
One of the loveliest structures is the University of Pavia, founded in 1222, though there has been a school of rhetoric in the city as of 825. From the 15th to 19th centuries twelve pillared courtyards were added, so styles of architecture came to include baroque and neoclassic. Four were once cloisters, and the premises enclose a beautiful garden, the University History Museum and the Natural History Museum. The university is considered to be one of the finest in Europe, particularly for its medical sciences.
On the day I visited students, wearing laurel crowns, were graduating, which gave them the privilege of walking across the green centers of the cloisters.
Hotels in Pavia offer little that would called deluxe furnishings. The Arnaboldi Palace is the most luxurious, and I found the Hotel Moderno, reclaimed from the old Liberty Building, across from the train station, lived up to its name only in having a good hot shower. (I shall be writing about where to eat in Pavia in another article.)
Vigevano, which is surrounded by rice farms, isone of Lombardy's artistic city for its museums and ... [+]
The appeal of Pavia extends well beyond its borders. It is but a short drive to the artistic city of Vigevano, which is surrounded by rice farms that produce the celebrated Carnaroli species, developed only in 1945 and called the “king of rice,” that informs much of the cooking of Lombardy.
Punctuated by a legacy of domination by Francesco Sforza, the walled city of Vigevano, 28 miles from Pavia, is centered by an arched gateway opening onto an exquisitely shaped Piazza Ducale, begun in 1492, with a magnificent rectangular setting of arcades painted in red and yellow figures. The rest of the old city is composed of winding streets fit for a leisurely walk, and at the end of the Piazza is the Cathedral, begun in 1532 under Duke Francesco II and completed in 1606 on the plan of a Latin cross. Its artwork has a fine Renaissance pedigree with a majestic green dome, and it is believed Bramante designed the tower in the piazza.
Pavia's Shoe Museum is based on the city's long history of producing Italian footwear.
The Sforza Castle began as a hunting lodge—there is still a falconry on the estate—and within the fortifications of 48 columns is now a fine International Shoe Museum that covers centuries of shoe design and manufacture, including that of the city itself, long renowned for its footwear design. There you can view the shoe patterns for Beatrice d’Este and John Paul II’s red papal pumps.
The Lombardiana Museum is known for its copies of all of Leonardo da Vinci’s works, including the codices and notebooks.
Pavia’s most visited attraction, however, is the Certosa, built from 1396 to1495 on a vast scale that was once one of Italy’s largest monasteries (the word certosa means a cloistered monastery run by the Carthusian Order, founded by St. Bruno in 1044). The Certosa is reached by bus and train from Pavia, with a 20-minute walk from their station stops.
The modest cloisters of the Certosa lie in the shadows of the huge church.
The irony of the Certosa is in seeing how the modest but beautiful cloister, where an ascetic devotion to a silent religious life was to be preserved, coexists with the grandiosity and excessive decoration of the Certosa as conceived by the Duke of Milan and his architect, Marco Solari, who began with a Gothic style but by the time it was consecrated in 1497 was a showcase for masterful Renaissance architecture. Over the next three centuries the Certosa acquired huge collections of art from every period, including works by Crespi, Guercino, Perugino, Bergonone and many others of lesser reputation set within vast halls and naves covered with paintings, sculptures and carved woodwork. The cloisters themselves are more simply decorated with terracotta decorations and frescoes.
The Carthusians were eventually booted from the Certosa by the Emperor Joseph II of Austria, who replaced them with Cistercians and, later, Carmelites. The population of the monastery dwindled in the 19th and 20th centuries, and for a while the monastery was shuttered, but today there are still a few Benedictines who, since the 1960s, live in the small rooms and still collect alms from the tourists.
When it was at full capacity the Certosa must have buzzed with activity, religious and agricultural. Today the current monks’ spare quarters may be visited, with their revolving, prison-like doors through which their food is delivered. One can only wonder how these monks regard the ostentation of the main building looming over them, which depends on considerable maintenance money that might be put to better use in the service of God. Living in that luxurious shadow must require great strength of character and faith to accept.
of character and faith to accept.
