The Cervara
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The Cervara (La Cervara - Abbazia di San Girolamo al Monte di Portofino)
The Cervara dates back to the summer of 1361, when the first stone was laid for a new monastery to be dedicated to Saint Girolamo. The designers of the project and its first residents were Benedictine monks, who were responsible for the great prestige the monastery reached in all of Europe over the centuries to come.
There is recorded evidence of the visits of Francesco Petrarca, Saint Catherine of Siena, and Popes Gregory XI (1376), Urban VI and Pius VII, as well as don John of Austria (the famous leader who defeated the Turks at Lepanto in 1574), scholar Alessandro Piccolomini and scientist Guglielmo Marconi. The most detailed records describe the incarceration of King Francis I of France, who was defeated by Charles V of Spain at Pavia in 1525. The King was imprisoned in the tower-prison (where you can enjoy a splendid view of the Gulf of Tigullio) rising steeply from the beach.
The monastery enjoyed its period of greatest splendour in the 15th and 16th centuries. You can recognise vestiges of this period in the original church structure, in the splendid quadrangular cloister, and in some of the rooms in the monastery. The 16th-century tower located at the entrance to the complex was built to defend it from Saracen pirates.
Yet the Cervara has withstood events that are much worse, including the terrible revolutionary period in the late 18th century and the resulting prohibition of monastic orders, which forced the Benedictines to abandon the monastery.
In the early 19th century, the complex was revived by a group of Trappist monks who had arrived from France. However, it was again abandoned for a number of years and finally placed under the Chiavari Diocese, which put it up for sale in 1859.
At this point, the Cervara changed hands a number of times among other religious groups - such as the Somascan Fathers at the end of the 19th century and the French Carthusian monks in the early 20th century - and finally became a private residence after being sold again in 1937.
Declared a National Monument in 1912, the Cervara complex has been given a major boost by a restoration project that conserves its original landscape, appearance, and use to which it is put.
When the current owners purchased the complex in 1990, important recovery and restoration projects were begun under the supervision of the Office of Natural and Architectural Properties of the Liguria regional government. The project was designed by architect Mide Osculati, and the painted works inside the complex were restored by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, the celebrated specialist who restored Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper”.
