About Chiaravalle Abbey:
Chiaravalle Abbey takes its name from the French village of Clairvaux in Burgundy, the homeland of the first Cistercian abbeys. Saint Bernard of Claivaux founded Chiaravalle Abbey in 1135 and helped to give the Cistercian order prominent status in the Church hierarchy. During the Renaissance, numerous painters and artists worked in the abbey: to this period belong for example Bernardino Luini’s works. From 1614 to 1616 the brothers Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere, called “i Fiammenghini”, decorated the interior walls of the church with the frescoes which are still visible.
Tradition holds that within the ancient walls of Chiaravalle Abbey, around the year 1000, Cistercian monks developed the recipe for Grana Padano as a way to preserve surplus milk. Indeed, with the land reclamation work undertaken by the Cistercian monks and the subsequent spread of livestock farming, it became a priority to find a solution to avoid wasting the abundant supply of fresh milk, a crucial element in the medieval diet.
The Cistercian monks thus discovered an effective method of preservation: cooking the milk in special cauldrons, adding rennet, and salting and aging it. Thus was born a hard cheese with a sweet and savory flavor that retains all of the milk’s nutrients. The name originally given to it, “caseus vetus,” Latin for “old or aged cheese,” to distinguish it from soft cheeses, was soon replaced by the common people with the term “grana,” reflecting the distinctive graininess of its texture.
Grana Padano’s fame quickly spread throughout the Renaissance courts as a prized ingredient in the elaborate cuisine of the nobility, but also in the countryside as a staple during times of famine. Appreciated by all social classes, Grana Padano thus became an expression of the social and economic culture of the Po Va
When the Napoleonic Cisalpine Republic was founded in 1798, the monastery was partly demolished. What remained included the church, part of the small cloister, the refectory and the entrance buildings. In 1861 Bramante’s cloister was destroyed to make way for the construction of the Milan-Pavia-Genoa railway. The abbey remained a private property until 1894, while the Cistercians returned in 1952.
The dome’s frescoes were restored in 1970–1972; further works of restoration have been in progress since 2004.
Traveling to Chiaravalle Abbey:
The Abbey is not actually in Milan itself, but just 6 miles (9.9 km) from the city.