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Padula is one of the most characteristic and visited villages in Campania, located in Diano Valley in the province of Salerno. Best known for the famous Charterhouse of San Lorenzo, the municipality actually hosts several sites of cultural and historical interest and more.
Padula's name is derived from the Latin paludem, in fact in the past a swamp stretched across the plain below.
The Charterhouse of Padula is one of the complex monumental baroque art most important of the Meridione and the First Charterhouse founded in Campania.
With an area of about 51,500 square meters, it is the largest in Italy And one of the largest in Europe. Its large cloister, 15,000 square meters wide, is the largest in the world.
The Carthusian monastery is an heir to Baroque art, nestled amid religious silence and majestic architecture. Because of its immense artistic and spiritual value, the complex has been declared a UNESCO heritage site 1998.
The beauty of the Charterhouse lies in the variety of colors, elegance, the frescoes wonderful and in the floors of vietrese ceramics. The complex is surrounded by a wall longer than two kilometers, while inside it houses a church, 350 rooms, 13 courtyards, 51 stairways and 41 fountains. Further marvels are the spacious gardens surrounding the Carthusian monastery.
The structure, being a Carthusian monastery, is divided into two areas: the Lower House and the Upper House.
In the Low House are the rooms devoted to production, sustenance, labor, and management: the stables, laundries, grain store, apothecary, stables, pharmacy, and workshops. The rooms overlook an inner courtyard, which was used as a meeting place with the outside world.
The High House, on the other hand, is the most sheltered place, where the monks, a complex of rooms intended for meditation and prayer, where a deep silence reigns.
The Great Cloister, the undisputed star of the complex, is the heart of the Carthusian monastery: a meeting point between inside and outside, an intimate place of contemplation and reflection, it enchants any visitor.
The Charterhouse began construction on January 28, 1306 at the behest of Thomas II Sanseverino. The aim is to get into the good graces of the Angevin rulers, supporters of the French religious order of the Carthusians, to whom the Carthusian monastery would be donated.
The Carthusian monastery would have been built on the foundation of the pre-existing Benedictine church of San Lorenzo, which is why the new building was again dedicated to the saint.
The Carthusian Monastery of Padula, moreover, represents an important junction in the trade routes that cross the South: and here is the reason why it will become, over the years, not only an important religious landmark, but also a economic center.
When, in the seventeenth century, the Sanseverino lineage died out, the Carthusian monastery of Padula began to be run by monks: it was during this period that the place experienced its heyday.
During the eighteenth century, the Carthusian monastery underwent a series of renovations that transformed it into one of the most distinguished symbols of Baroque art in the Kingdom of Naples.
The life of the Carthusian monastery is disrupted in the 1800s, during the rule of Murat: the complex is used for barracks And hundreds of works of art are lost.
Even after the restoring the Carthusian order under the new Bourbon kingdom, the Carthusian Monastery of Padula did not recover the splendor and wealth of its early days; after the Unification of Italy the order was again suppressed and forced to abandon the structure.
During the two world wars, the Charterhouse, now abandoned, is being exploited as a prison and concentration camp.
The Carthusian monastery provides the backdrop for an ancient legend on re Charles V: the king, returning from the battle of Tunis In 1535, he stayed there with his army. It was on this occasion that the monks, to welcome the ruler, decided to prepare an omelette with a thousand eggs.
The Charterhouse of Padula was also featured in the film sets: appears in Once upon a time, a 1967 film by Francesco Rosi starring Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif, and in Horses are born, 1989 film by Sergio Staino with David Riondino and Paolo Hendel, a film set in the Bourbon era.
Le Caves of Pertosa-Auletta are about 40 kilometers from Padula and are located in the Alburni Mountains massif. The caves are one of the focal geosites of the Geopark "Cilento": are the only caves in Italy where you can navigate a underground river, the Negro, but they are also the only ones in Europe to retain the remains of a pile-dwelling village dating back to the second millennium BC.
The river offers the opportunity to undertake an evocative boat trip immersed in a magical silence, among caverns and hollows shaped by nature over thousands of years. The boat used for the trip on the river is a flat bottom and it is pulled slowly by hand from the guides through an aerial system of ropes; in fact, the water is almost still.
The temperature inside the caves is constant all year round and is about 15° with high humidity, so it is advisable even during the hottest periods to bring closed shoes and a jacket.
Padula is home to several museums of various socio-cultural interests.
A particularly interesting museum is the museum-home dedicated to Joe Petrosino, policeman and Italian-American detective who emigrated to the USA vigorously pursuing the fight against the mafia before being assassinated at only 49 years old.
The surname museum is an interesting initiative promoted by the genealogist Michele Cartusciello who, interested in recreating thefamily tree of his family, conducted a series of studies and research in Padula's archives, and then devoted himself to the opening of the museum.
Located on the ground floor of a house dating back to the 1700s, the Museum is unique in the world. Primarily of the educational, provides within it an itinerary divided into sections, specially created to help visitors take their first steps in genealogical research among deeds, documents, graphic representations and online searches.
The Multimedia Civic Museum is housed in the Brando Palace, near the city hall. It is an interactive trail that runs through the millennial history of Padula and the Diano Valley, from prehistory to the nineteenth century.
Innovative multimedia supports enable an original virtual exploration that covers archaeology, Risorgimento, brigandage, environment and composite civil identities.
In the last room upstairs, a virtual imaginary trial invites guests to interaction: the protagonist and defendant is Carlo pisacane, the hero of the Sapri expedition of 1857, which ended tragically in a shipwreck between Padula and Sanza. Just in honor of the Risorgimento patriots who took part in the expedition, the Shrine of the Three Hundred, housed in the Church of the Most Holy Annunciation.
