Abbazia di Chiaravalle, Milan

Abbazia di Chiaravalle is a Cistercian monastic complex, and the church before you belongs to the earliest Gothic experiments in Italy. Its permanent construction began around 1150 to 1160, and the church was consecrated in 1221. The brick façade gives you a clear sense of its age, while the entrance portal carries carved saints and the abbey’s emblem.

Look at the crossing tower and the surviving cloister bays: they belong to a complex that continued growing across several centuries. Bramante and Francesco Pecorari are associated with its design, and Bramante later worked with Giovanni Antonio Amadeo on the large cloister and chapterhouse. That cloister was destroyed in 1861 to make way for the Milan-Pavia-Genoa railway; only part of the earlier cloister remains.

Inside, the restraint expected of Cistercian churches gives way to an astonishing cycle of frescoes. Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere, called the Fiamminghini, covered the church walls between 1614 and 1616. In the dome, scenes from the life of the Virgin date from 1345 to 1347 and are tentatively linked to Giotto’s school. The surviving paintings make this abbey’s long history visible in layers.