Chiaravalle Abbey is a Cistercian monastery in the Chiaravalle district of Milan. It was founded on January 22, 1135, as a daughter house of Clairvaux Abbey, with Bernard of Clairvaux as its first abbot. Its church, begun around 1150 to 1160 and consecrated on May 2, 1221, is one of the first Gothic buildings in Italy and keeps some late Romanesque influences.
The bell tower, known as the Ciribiciaccola, is about 185 feet (56.26 meters) tall. Its windows are made of Candoglia marble, the same stone used for Milan Cathedral. In 1490 Cardinal Ascanio Sforza commissioned Bramante and Giovanni Antonio Amadeo for the great cloister and the chapterhouse.
The abbey was partly demolished in 1798, and the railway destroyed Bramante's cloister in 1861. Cistercians returned in 1952, and restoration has continued since 2004.
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