History

The Cistercian order, founded at Cîteaux (Burgundy) in 1098 as a reform movement within Benedictine monasticism, spread rapidly across Europe in the twelfth century under the intellectual leadership of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). The Cistercian programme combined agricultural productivity (each abbey was a large farming operation, often pioneer-clearing woodland or draining marshes) with an architectural aesthetic of extreme austerity: no sculpture, no coloured glass, no polychrome decoration, proportions governed by mathematical ratios derived from the square and double square.

Staffarda’s foundation followed this pattern: the abbey was planted in the low-lying flood land of the Po tributary (the “staffarda” was a swampy, rush-covered area), presumably to drain and cultivate it. The economic success of the operation is visible in the large granary — the grange — which remains one of the finest surviving examples of medieval agricultural infrastructure in Italy. The abbey’s church, built in stages from the 1130s to the late thirteenth century, follows the Cistercian model closely: a nave of undecorated round-arched bays, plain capitals, and no figurative carving anywhere except the tomb slabs of the Marquises of Saluzzo.

The Battle of Staffarda (1690), fought in the fields around the abbey between the French army of Catinat and the Savoyard-Imperial forces of the Prince of Savoy (later the Duke of Savoy Victor Amadeus II), was among the most significant engagements of the Nine Years’ War in northern Italy. The abbey itself was occupied and partly damaged by French troops.