The mighty walls and the arches that soar stand out among the green of the surrounding trees, seem to tell the story of that place that in the past was a cultural and religious crossroads, up to the disastrous earthquake of 1783 that reduced it to rubble.
The abbey is linked to the name of one of the greatest medieval mystics, Gioacchino da Fiore, who was abbot here from 1177 until 1187.
The Abbey, around the year 1000, passed to the Cistercian monastic order and with them reached the highest point of its splendor in the first half of the 13th century. The Cistercians, in fact, austere and sober, determined the definitive economic and spiritual take-off of the Abbey.
It reached the peak of its splendor with the arrival of the “calavrese abbot Giovacchino, with a gifted prophetic spirit”, as described by the great poet Dante Alighieri in the 12th canto of the Paradise of the Divine Comedy (verses 140-141). Returning from his trip to the East and to the Holy Land and headed for his native town of Celico, he saw the Abbey of Corazzo for the first time, remaining fascinated by the wild beauty and silence that surrounded those walls until, dressed in the monastic habit, in 1177 it became its abbot.
Here he wrote his major works, “Concordia del nuovo e del vecchio Testamento”, “Explanation of the Apocalypse” and “The Psalter of the Ten Strings” so much that in May 1184 he received from Pope Lucius III the encouragement to continue his studies and in his reflections, encouragement reiterated by the pontifical successor Urban III.
The structure of the abbey still preserves a clear architectural and functional layout.
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