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Padula
An other thing you may get curious about is the strange iron machine in the entrance courtyard: it has been built in 1996 with the purpose of cooking and turning upside down a 1000 eggs omelette. As a matter of fact there is a legend according to which in 1534 the emperor Charles V was guest of the Carthusian monks, who in his honour prepared a giant omelette with a thousand eggs. So, since 1996, every year in September, among the events related to the wild boar feast the giant omelette is made to offer to people. Other things to see in Padula are San Frank’s Church and the Early Christian St. Jospeh’s Baptistery.
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Acciaroli Nearby sights
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Padula is a small village located at the south-est boundary of the Cilento
area. It is a very interesting little center, with its network of small and
characteristic roads. The main attraction of Padula is one of the biggest
European Carthusian monastery, called “La Certosa”, founded around 1306 by
Tommaso Sanseverino, a mighty nobleman of Angio’s party, Count of Marsico
and owner of the lands of Vallo of Diano, who gave it to Carthusian monks.
In that times monks had a very effective organisation for land reclamation
and farming works. During five centuries, as far as 1806, when it was
assaulted and plundered by Napoleon’s soldiers, the original monastery had
continuously been enriched with new architectural parties, statues, gardens,
works of art and craftsmanship, an immense number of books and big new
portions of land. It was practically a very big firm in which the monks
organised in the territory agriculture and all the craftsmanship production,
whilst the enclosed monks produced and ordered art and culture. Similar to
that of all the Carthusian monasteries, though particularly huge, the
original plant is if the XIV century, to which successive interventions were
added: important works in the second half of XVI, with the transformation of
the big cloister and substantial development of religious ornaments. In
XVIII century more works were done, among which the realisation of the
covered promenade and of the huge baroque staircase. 
The visit lasts about one hour beside the spaces for the cult, rich of
splendid sculptured decorations in stucco, marble marqueteries made with
pulverised precious marbles and religious ornaments, you’ll visit one of the
many monks cells, to realise how was their quiet comfortable life of study
and meditation, the different cloisters and the huge kitchen with its
fireplace as big as a room. In some of these spaces in the ‘70ies the famous
fairy tale film was shot “Once there was...”, with Sophia Loren and Omar
Sharif. The barrels now in the monastery cave were made on that occasion.
