A Cistercian Landscape to safeguard: the abbey of Santa Maria di Realvalle in Sarno plain

Cistercian Order's architecture gives an important example of the human ability to adapt to the natural components of the landscape and to take advantage from their use. Designed on a model of completely self-sufficient monastic and agricultural "towns", the Cistercian abbeys were built in sites chosen for their specific topographic characteristics, in the presence of wide flat areas, nearby forests and of watercourses. According to the Benedictine Rule, the Cistercians cultivated lands and breeded the cattle in order to ensure the livelihood of the monastery. The importance of these activities is testified by the particular spatial articulation of the abbeys which, in addition to the main complex, consisted of several rural structures –grange – used to manage the farm work. In order to provide for the constant need of water supply, both for the daily life as for the rural activities, the Cistercians were able to exploit of the proximity of the rivers by engaging in the control and distribution of the water. The knowledge demonstrated in the hydraulic field is testified by the realization of different kind of engineering works built to regularize or divert the rivers’ course and define alternative routes so as to bring water inside the monastery or near the grange. Santa Maria di Realvalle Abbey in Scafati was built starting from 1273 and represents a rare example of a thirteenth-century Cistercian architecture in the southern Italy. Despite the several transformations carried out during centuries, it is still possible to identify both its spatial articulation as its environmental qualification. As in the other cases, it was built in correspondence of a fluvial landscape characterized by the presence of a mostly flat alluvial territory, the nearby Scafati forest, and the River Sarno, still navigable at that time. Despite the high historical value and the high potential for a broader development of the Plain of Sarno, Realvalle Abbey is today in conditions of widespread degradation. Because of this, the paper aims at renovating the attention towards this monument so that its restoration could be, at the same time, an instrument of improvement of the fruition of the whole cultural landscape.