There’s no place colder than the Lombard plain in January, and nowhere colder in Lombardy than the vast echoing church and cloisters of the Charterhouse of Pavia. It is a magnificent edifice, built by the piety of the Sforza and the Visconti, who are buried there. The Carthusians themselves have voluntarily withdrawn, as the tourists interrupted their contemplative silence. But there are still monks there, Cistercians, who act as tour guides. When the last tourist leaves for the day, the place must seem pretty empty. But for a better picture of all that is wrong with the contemporary Church, try Pavia Cathedral: the first stone was laid about a thousand years ago, and the place is still not finished. Worse, it is falling down before completion: vast buttresses of undressed concrete hold up the huge dome, which is supposed to be the biggest in Italy after St Peter’s. The cathedral is immensely impressive, but somehow lacks soul, and gives one the terrifying impression of a Church in inexorable decline.