The Cistercian monastery on the edge of the city
At the southern edge of Milan, among rice fields and the farms of the Parco Agricolo Sud, the Abbey of Chiaravalle was founded in 1135 by St Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian reformer, whose French monastery gave it its name (Chiaravalle is the Italian for Clairvaux). It is still home to a community of Cistercian monks.
The monks reclaimed the marshy land around the abbey, introducing irrigation with the "marcite", meadows flooded with running water even in winter that allowed up to nine hay harvests a year, and the cultivation of rice, and started the production of cheese, the ancestor of Grana Padano. The church, in Lombard Gothic brick, is dominated by the extraordinary Ciribiciaccola, a tall octagonal bell tower with layered loggias, which the Milanese have nicknamed with a playful word. Inside are frescoes by the Luini school and in the transept a "Madonna della Buonanotte" by Bernardino Luini. The small cloister survives in part.
Tip: the abbey can be reached by bus from the Corvetto metro stop; the monks sell honey, liqueurs and herbal products in the shop.
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