San Benedetto, Bergamo, Renaissance monastery in Bergamo, Italy.
San Benedetto is a cloistered Benedictine monastery in Bergamo's lower town, formed by the church, the convent and the cloister. The church facade is divided by four pilasters, with a stone-framed portal and a white-and-terracotta two-tone scheme; inside, a central plan with an octagonal tribune and dome, and a grilled choir where the nuns follow services.
The monastery resulted from the 1460 union of two Benedictine communities, Santa Maria Novella of Stezzano and Santa Maria in Valmarina, both reduced by famine and plague. A small church existed by 1448, consecrated to Saint Benedict in 1451. Pietro Isabello laid the first stone of the new church on 6 May 1522; Bishop Vittore Soranzo consecrated it on 11 September 1547. Suppressed in 1797 under the Cisalpine Republic, it was restored on 10 May 1827.
This is a cloistered Benedictine nunnery, not a monks' house; the nuns follow services from a closed choir above arches in the church, separated from the assembly. The name San Benedetto in Valmarina comes from the 1460 union of two communities. A Madonna image in the small church was said to weep in 1503, drawing 28 nuns by 1504.
The monastery is a cloistered female community: the church and the cloister of San Benedetto are the parts a visitor can enter, while the nuns' enclosure stays closed. The complex stands at the corner of Via Sant'Alessandro and Via Carlo Botta in the lower city, inside the 15th-century Muraine walls, a short walk from the Borgo Santo Stefano area.
The church facade keeps a two-tone finish of white plaster and terracotta, brought back to light in the 2011 restoration after water infiltration had caused pieces of brickwork and terracotta ornament to fall on the Via Botta side. The same works, led by architect Leonardo Angelini, uncovered frescoes and paintings thought lost.
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