Cloister of the former monastery of Saint Bernardino (Chiostro dell’ex monastero di San Bernardino)

The monastery of San Bernardino was commissioned by Lucrezia Borgia, who in 1501, after complex negotiations, married Alfonso d’Este, the future Duke of Ferrara. The purposes of the new monastic foundation were multiple: to give the abbey to Camilla, daughter of her late brother Cesare, better known as “il Valentino”, thus satisfying the needs dictated by the family prestige; to relieve the excessive number of Poor Clares in the convent of Corpus Domini, run by her confidante, Sister Laura Boiardi. Next to the convent of S. Bernardino, overlooking Via della Giovecca, Lucrezia had a palace built around a square courtyard, with the characteristic façade of Ferrara’s early Renaissance buildings: a terracotta wall punctuated by windows and flues. In 1798, following the Napoleonic suppressions, the church was closed and the nuns retired to the monastery of Mortara. In 1823, the church and part of the monastery of San Bernardino were demolished. Only the west side of the 16th-century cloister survives, where round arches, now walled in, on columns with capitals with high fluted collars can be seen.