In 1085 Count Cassini and his family invited the Benedictine monks into their small church near the Cerreto Castle. The abbey building complex, which stood next to the church and the many estates cultivated and made fertile by the friars, remained in the Benedictine Order until 1135 when, at the request of the Bishop of Lodi, the Cistercians took over.
Today all that remains of the magnificent structure is the church, a lone jewel in the Lodi countryside and an example of the move from Romanesque to Gothic in Lombardy.
Built of brick around 1160-70, the church has an elegant façade with a sloping roof, and in front of this a pronaos consisting of three bays divided by buttresses. The design of the interior in the form of a Latin cross, which harmonises perfectly with the exterior, is emphasised by the chromatic interaction between the white of the cross-shaped vaulted roof and the lines of the brickwork arches and the brick pillars with their square capitals. Following the Cistercian custom there are three chapels on each side opening onto the transept, with barrel-vault ceilings in the shape of a pointed arch: worth noting in the left chapel is the Madonna and child with saints painted in the 16th century by the celebrated Lodi artist Callisto Piazza.
The elegant octagonal bell tower, with its single and two-light windows, dates back to the late 13th century; only the upper section was rebuilt in 1680 when the medieval tower was struck by lightning and lost its spire.
Milan