The Most Beautiful Medieval Carthusian Monasteries in the World
6 places in 3 countries · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful medieval Carthusian monasteries in the world are Certosa di Padula (Italy), Grande Chartreuse (France) and Certosa di Pavia (Italy). The list covers 6 medieval Carthusian monasteries in 3 countries. Italy has the most, with 4. Last updated 5 October 2026.
A charterhouse is the monastery of the Carthusians, the strictest of the medieval orders, founded by Saint Bruno in the French Alps in 1084. Carthusian monks live largely as hermits, each in his own small house with a garden, and meet only for certain prayers and meals. That way of life produced an unmistakable plan: a great cloister lined with individual cells, set apart from a church and a smaller cloister for common life. Because princes often paid for charterhouses as acts of piety and as their own burial places, the order of silence ended up with some of the richest monasteries in Europe.
The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the order, lies in a high valley of the Chartreuse Mountains near Grenoble and still houses a closed community of monks. In southern Italy, the Certosa di Padula, founded in 1306, is one of the largest monastic complexes in the country, with a vast great cloister. The Certosa di Pavia was begun in 1396 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti as a family mausoleum, and its marble facade is a showpiece of the Lombard Renaissance.
Naples' Certosa di San Martino looks down over the city and the bay from the Vomero hill, its interiors reworked in rich Baroque marble. The Florence Charterhouse at Galluzzo crowns a hill south of the city like a fortified village. In Spain, the Miraflores Charterhouse outside Burgos holds the alabaster tomb of King John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal, carved by Gil de Siloé.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Certosa di Padula | Carthusian monastery | Italy | ✓ |
| 2 | Grande Chartreuse | Carthusian monastery | France | |
| 3 | Certosa di Pavia | Carthusian monastery | Italy | |
| 4 | Certosa di San Martino | Carthusian monastery | Italy | |
| 5 | Florence Charterhouse | Carthusian monastery | Italy | |
| 6 | Miraflores Charterhouse, Burgos | Carthusian monastery | Spain |
01 Certosa di Padula
Italy · 36.1 km from Potenza40.337° N 15.652° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by gvizzari0 from Pixabay The Certosa di San Lorenzo at Padula, in the Vallo di Diano of southern Campania, is the largest charterhouse in Italy and one of the grandest in Europe: about 51,500 square metres of cloisters, gardens, courtyards and some 320 rooms, spread out at the foot of the hill town of Padula.
Did you know? The Czechoslovak Legion in Italy was founded here in 1917, among prisoners of war held in the charterhouse during the First World War.
02 Grande Chartreuse
France · 21.1 km from Grenoble45.363° N 5.794° E
User:Arnejohs · Public domain In a narrow, wooded valley of the Chartreuse massif north of Grenoble lies the mother house of the Carthusian order, one of the strictest communities in the Christian world. In 1084 Saint Bruno and six companions, guided by Bishop Hugh of Grenoble, settled in this "desert" to live as hermits in community.
Did you know? The rockfall that destroyed the first monastery on 30 January 1132 killed seven monks; two chapels still mark the original site higher up the valley.
03 Certosa di Pavia
Italy · 24.3 km from Milan45.257° N 9.148° E
Image by Paskvi from Pixabay Carthusian monks were meant to live in silence and plainness, which makes the Certosa di Pavia one of the great contradictions of Italian art: a charterhouse for a handful of hermits whose church front is among the most lavishly carved façades of the Renaissance.
Did you know? The monastery ran its own printing press from 1560, and its first printed book, a Carthusian breviary, appeared the following year.
04 Certosa di San Martino
Italy · 0.2 km from Naples40.843° N 14.241° E
Pinotto992 · Public domain On the crest of the Vomero hill, beside Castel Sant'Elmo, the Certosa di San Martino looks down over the whole of Naples and its gulf. Together the castle and the charterhouse form the city's most visible skyline landmark.
Did you know? The museum keeps the Tavola Strozzi, a tempera panel of about 1472–1473 showing Naples from the sea as it looked in the fifteenth century.
05 Florence Charterhouse
Certosa di Firenze
Italy · 5.9 km from Florence43.731° N 11.221° E
Mattana · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Florence Charterhouse crowns Monte Acuto, a hill on the southern edge of Florence where the Ema and Greve rivers meet, and its long mass of walls, loggias and roofs gives it the air of a small fortified town. It was founded in 1341 by Niccolò Acciaiuoli, a Florentine banker who rose to be Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples, and was almost finished when he died in 1365.
Did you know? The carved wooden choir stalls were made between 1570 and 1590 by Angelo Feltrini.
06 Miraflores Charterhouse, Burgos
Cartuja de Santa MarÃa de Miraflores
Spain · 2.4 km from Burgos42.338° N 3.657° W
Ecelan 08:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC) · CC BY 2.5 The Cartuja de Miraflores sits among trees on a low hill east of Burgos, and from outside it gives little away: a plain monastic enclosure and a church whose west front, in the late-Gothic Isabelline manner, carries the carved coats of arms of its royal founders. Inside that church is one of the most concentrated displays of late-15th-century sculpture in Spain, made for a single purpose, to bury a king.
Did you know? In 1445 John II gave the monks a triptych by Rogier van der Weyden; Napoleonic troops under General Darmagnac took it, and it now hangs in Berlin.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful medieval Carthusian monasteries in the world?
- On our list, Certosa di Padula (Italy) ranks first, followed by Grande Chartreuse (France) and Certosa di Pavia (Italy).
- Which country has the most medieval Carthusian monasteries in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (4), France (1) and Spain (1).
- What is a charterhouse?
- A charterhouse is a monastery of the Carthusian order. The English word comes from the French 'Chartreuse', the name of the mountains where the order's first house was founded.
- Why is Chartreuse liqueur named after a monastery?
- The liqueur has been made by Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse since the 18th century, from a recipe of herbs and plants, and takes its name from the monastery and its mountains.
- How do Carthusian monks live?
- Each monk lives mostly alone in a cell, a small house with a workroom and garden around the great cloister. The community gathers in church for night and day offices and shares meals only on Sundays and feast days.
- How many medieval Carthusian monasteries are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 6 medieval Carthusian monasteries in 3 countries. Italy has the most, with 4.