PADULA Charterhouse private tour: a hidden gem in south of Italy (Unesco)

The guided tour in Padula will focus in the monastery, the largest in Italy and among the largest in Europe.

The Certosa di San Lorenzo, it is a very large monastery, comprising 51,500 m² (12.7 acres), with 320 rooms and halls. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998, was built starting in 1300 at the behest of Count Sanseverino. The dedication to San Lorenzo della Certosa is instead due to the pre-existing church dedicated to the saint who insisted in the area, belonging to the Benedictine order, then demolished following the construction of the Charterhouse. At the end of the 1500s, Baroque art revisions were started up to the passage of the complex to the Carthusian monks of Padula up to the suppression of the order by Napoleon until arriving in the modern era with the creation of the provincial archaeological museum western lucania.

The visit starts from the entrance hall with the cloister of the guesthouse and then enter the church and admire the decorations in Neapolitan baroque style with golden stucco, majolica floors and marble altars. You will remain open-eyed seeing the wooden choir of the Fathers with 16th-century wooden inlays and then go through the hall of the bells, the Chapter and the Treasury. The tour continues with the view of the great refectory hall with the fresco of the Cana wedding of Francesco d’Elia and the magnificent kitchen with a large central hood and decorated with majolica tiles.

The tour continues by visiting the cloister of the prior and the large central cloister until you arrive at the end of the tour to the monumental elliptical staircase

Included:

• Walking tour with licensed tour guide

Not included:

• Tickets entry
• Food and drinks
• Transfer service

What to bring:

• Comfortable shoes
• Water
• Sun hat on hot days

Meeting point:

• Outside ticket office (next the staircase entry)