Benvenuti in Ciociaria

{mosimage} Under the rocky ridge of Rotonaria Mount, within the green of the forests which surround it, arises the Charterhouse of Trisulti. Its origins go back to the year 1OOO, when, the Benedictine monk St. Dominick of Foligno founded a monastery dedicated to St. Bartholomew. This place of wild beauty and solitude was already place of hermits, as the mystic grotto of the Madonna delle Cese testifies.

By the will of Pope Innocence III from Anagni, in 1204 the abbey and its treasures went to the Carthusians who overlooked the construction of a new monastery in compliance with their life and monastic rules. The cenoby is an organic complex of buildings, paths and gardens in a small square that looks over a wooded gulf. On this square we find an old Guest-rooms in Romanesque Gothic style called "the Palace of Innocence III", who loved to sojourn here. Today  place is seat of an important library. Close to it rises the Abbey dedicated to St. Bartholomew. Worked over in the course of the centuries, it is in 18th century style with a neo-classical façade.

{mosimage} The inner nave is divided by a wall into two parts: one for the lay brothers and one for the Fathers;  both are noteworthy  for their wooden choirs. One can admire the paintings of Filippo Balbi, while the barrel vault is decorated with frescoes by Giuseppe Caci. The treasure of the Certosa is the Pharmacy, set up in a little building: the garden before it, characterized by box-tree hedges, was once a botanical garden. The pharmacy was built in the 18th century, but the monks of the Charterhouse have always picked on the mountains herbs used to prepare medicaments, unguents, spices and stored in vases of majolica clay. One can still admire them well exhibited in one of the two delicious rooms. The Pharmacy was frescoed in Pompeiian style by G. Manco, according to the taste of the end of the 8th century, strongly influenced by the finding of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The adjacent small sitting-room was frescoed by Balbi, who describes it as follows: ”On the right hand side there is a small sitting-room that is a real masterpiece. Therein, what you see is my work: furnishings, engravings, decorations, drawings, paintings, all. I warn you not to take your hat off, as many have already done, before that painting on the opposite wall, which seems to come smiling towards you as a living person. His name was Fra’ Benedetto Ricciardi” (Friar Benedetto Ricciardi was the pharmacy’s director until 1863, the year of his death). Since 1947 the Certosa of Trisulti has been inhabited by the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Casamari, who take care of it.