Crespi's fresco cycle
He covered walls and ceiling entirely in under two years.
Sailko — CC BY 3.0 · Giovanni Dall'Orto — CC BY-SA 2.5 it · Sciking — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Sciking — CC BY-SA 3.0
A Carthusian monastery founded in 1349 in what was then countryside north-west of Milan, and completely swallowed by the city — it stands today between a motorway and modern housing. The contrast is startling: you come out of a metro station among 1960s blocks and find a sixteenth-century church holding some of the most important frescoes in Lombardy. Those frescoes are the reason to visit: Daniele Crespi covered the walls and ceiling entirely in the 1620s with scenes from the life of Saint Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order. The work was executed in under two years and is among the most complete baroque fresco cycles in northern Italy. The Carthusians are a silent order whose monks live singly in cells around a courtyard and gather only for prayer — which explains the monastery's form. Petrarch visited it in the fourteenth century and described it in his letters. Entry is normally free with limited hours.
He covered walls and ceiling entirely in under two years.
Carthusians live singly in cells and gather only for prayer.
He described the monastery in his fourteenth-century letters.
North-west Milan near the ring road
A Catholic order founded by Saint Bruno in 1084 in the Chartreuse mountains of France, counted among the strictest. A monk lives in near-complete solitude: a private cell with a room, a workshop and a small garden, taking his meals alone through a hatch in the door and meeting his brothers only at set prayers and on a weekly walk. The order has never been reformed because, as is said of it, it was never deformed. The green liqueur known as Chartreuse is made by this order.
The north-west is residential and industrial rather than touristic. But nearby are the Cimitero Monumentale, an open-air sculpture museum of the tombs of Milan's wealthy families, and the exhibition district. The Certosa itself is usually visited as a separate stop rather than part of a walk — allow an hour and a half including the travel.
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