Right in your back yard

This is the view from my bedroom window.

Monastero Del Corpus Domini, Ferrara Italy

It is a monastery (Monastero Del Corpus Domini) and attached to it is a nunnery.  My kitchen window looks directly into the compound’s library.  Sometimes, cooking dinner, I catch glimpses of their life inside.  Reading in full habit, or hanging wash in the garden.  Not so different from my life in so many ways and completely different in others.  Regardless, my neighbors always make me grin.

This picture shows the entirety of the commute to one of Ferrara’s top thirty things to see.

 

The ceiling of the nave has a fresco of the Glory of St. Catherine Vegri, Joseph Ghedini (1770-1773).

I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the crypt.  Which, I must say, sounds like a place I would rather take wooden stakes and garlic rather than a camera any way.  In all honesty, it looked like a religious meeting hall where kids would hold their eighth grade formal or leadership would discuss the working of the institution…you know, except for the graves. 

So it’s time to get my history dork on:  Here in Ferrara, the Estes family were the noble family until Ferrara became papal state and the Estes family took their toys (okay, mainly their art) and moved to Modena where you can still see the collection of works they pilfered from this fine town.  There’s a whole museum stuffed full of it.   So why am I boring you with this?  Well, because the graves belong mainly to Este family members who were found buried in unmarked graves, no coffins on the other side of town.  Mainly from the Este family: Eleanor of Aragon, Alfonso, Lucrezia Borgia, Lucrezia de 'Medici, Alfonso II and others.  Also, St. Catherine is  preserved here.  I think.  Or she stayed here.  My Italian is not so great, but the nun telling me all this was really sweet.

The public church was decorated in late Baroque era. On the main altar is the altarpiece of the Communion of the Apostles of Giambettino Cignaroli (1768)

This is the charming portal to this special place.  From here, I turned and took this picture:

Our House!

Our Back Yard

We have made it to fifteen of the twenty regions of Italy.  We have hit the double digits in European and Middle Eastern countries we have visited since arriving in Italy, but it took us this long to explore what was right in our back yard.