Around 1230 Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Azzo VII and Giovanna di Puglia, was born.
A woman with a very strong vocation, she is one of the great medieval mystics who attracts around her many sisters from the noble families of Ferrara and in 1257 founds the Monastery of St. Anthony in Polesine, a sacred place beloved by the people of Ferrara.
The future blessed led the community until her death in 1262, and her tomb became a pilgrimage destination for centuries to come.
The church and monastery of St. Anthony in Polesine are famous not only for their foundress, but also for the splendor of the architecture and decorative apparatus: in the first decade of the 14th century the famous cycle of frescoes of the life of Christ by a painter drawing from the school of Giotto was begun.
Of the frescoes one notices not only the highly refined line but also the originality of certain figurative choices.
Even today the Monastery is an important center of religious life and a place of devotion in the city, and it is the oldest and still inhabited cloistered place in Ferrara.
