Description of the attraction
The Viboldone Abbey is located in the town of San Giuliano Milanese in the province of Milan in Lombardy. Its construction began in 1176 and was completed only in 1348, when the abbey belonged to the monastic order of the humiliates. In those years, in addition to monks, laymen lived here, who worked in the abbey, weaved clothes from wool and cultivated the surrounding fields using innovative technologies. After the abolition of the order of humiliates by order of Pope Pius V (in 1571), Viboldone passed to the order of the Benedictines, who were forced to leave the abbey in 1773, when Lombardy became part of the Austrian Empire. For many years, the abbey turned out to be abandoned, but since 1941, nuns from the society of Mother Margaret Mark have lived in it.
The façade of Viboldone, completed in 1348, is divided into three sectors by means of two semi-columns and is notable for vaulted windows and brickwork with white stone decorations. The entrance portal is made of white marble and is crowned with a lunette with a marble sculpture of the Madonna and Child with Saints Ambrose and John of Meda. On either side of it are two Gothic niches with statues of Saints Peter and Paul. The dark wood door itself dates from the 14th century.
The bell tower of the abbey resembles a façade in its appearance - with cotto frames and small arcades at the base of double and triple vaulted windows. At the very top, small round windows are visible.
The interior of the Viboldone Abbey is very simple, even austere - there are only a few decorations, and only the apse is richly decorated with frescoes of the Giotto school. The room is divided into a central nave and two side chapels with five aisles each (the first are made in the Romanesque style, and the rest in the Gothic style). On the walls you can see a fresco depicting the Madonna with saints and a huge image of the Last Judgment with Jesus in the center and the damned, at which Satan is looking. Other murals depicting musical instruments are kept in the Music Hall in a building next to the abbey.
