Padula Charterhouse, in Italian Certosa di Padula, is a large Carthusian monastery located in the town of Padula, in the Cilento National Park, in Southern Italy. It is a World Heritage Site. The monastery is the largest in Italy. Its building history covers 450 years, but the principal parts of the buildings are in Baroque style. It is a very large monastery, comprising 51,500 m2, with 320 rooms and halls. A famous spiral staircase of white marble inside an annex leads to the large library.
Padula Charterhouse was founded by Tommaso di San Severino on 27 April 1306 on the site of an earlier monastery. It is dedicated to Saint Lawrence, and its architectural structure supposedly recalls the griddle-iron upon which the saint was burnt alive.
According to the strict Carthusian distinction between contemplation and work, there are two distinct places for these practices: on the one hand the peaceful cloisters, the library with its fine Vietri ceramic tiled floor, the chapels decorated with fine inlaid marble works. The altar frontals in most of the chapels are inlaid, not with marble, but with some of the most spectacular 18th. century scagliola work ever created. This is the highest concentration of such work in one place. One of the centres of production was in Naples. the cloister orchards; and on the other hand the large kitchen, the cellars with their enormous wine vats, the laundries, and the huge external yards, where there were people working in the stables, ovens, stores, and at the olive oil mill. The yards were used for productive activities and for trade between the charterhouse and the external world.
The monastery also houses the archaeological museum of Western Lucania, which preserves a collection of all the finds unearthed in the excavations at the necropolis of Sala Consilina and Padula. This museum represents a period of time ranging from protohistory to the Hellenistic Age.
The building has also played a role in the military history of Italy. It served as French headquarters during the Napoleonic Wars, then as a base of Garibaldi's Southern Army during the Risorgimento, finally, as an internment camp for prisoners during the World War 1 and World War 2. It was here that the Czechoslovak Legion in Italy was established in 1917.
References:The Broch of Clickimin is a large and well preserved, though somewhat restored broch near Lerwick. Originally built on an island in Clickimin Loch (now increased in size by silting and drainage), it was approached by a stone causeway. The water-level in the loch was reduced in 1874, leaving the broch high and dry. The broch is situated within a walled enclosure and, unusually for brochs, features a large 'blockhouse' between the opening in the enclosure and the broch itself. Another unusual feature is a stone slab featuring sculptured footprints, located in the causeway which approached the site. Situated across the loch is the Clickimin Leisure Centre.