After it had been stripped down by Napoleon, the Monastery at Pesio was acquired by Cav. Giuseppe Avena who, having modified and restored various parts, transformed it into a hydrotherapy centre which, between mid to late nineteenth century became a favourite resort for European high society.

Apart from numerous apartments able to house about 150 people, within the hotel complex elegant games rooms, ball rooms and reading rooms. There were also specialised medical clinics for those with heart disease,  nervous complaints , those of weak constitution and convalescents.

The Monastery was therefore frequented by numerous personalities of note such as the politicians Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Massimo d’Azeglio and Giovanni Giolitti, the writer stendal, the Egyptologist Fabretti and the botanist Burnat; author of detailed studies of the flora of the Pesio Valley and to whom the park  has dedicated an Alpine botanical station at high altitude and a documentary film about orchids.

The Princesses Clotilde and Maria Pia of Savoia also visited the resort  along with king Umberto, whose presence as last sovereign of Italy symbolised the age old link between the Monastery and the Court of  the Savoia family.

Giuseppe Avena was also owner of the Regia crystal and glass factory at Chiusa Pesio. This factory was built here by the Savoia Family because the area was rich in woodland from which was derived the necessary fuel.

Quality glass work continued in Chiusa Pesio for about a century , and today there is section of the civic museum dedicated to it.

When Avena died in 1853, the management of the plant was left to his son in law Luigi Suaut whose daughter married the lawyer Biagio Caranti,  one of the thousand involved in Garibaldi’s expedition  and author, of , among other things, a thoughtful thesis about the Carthusian Monastery at Pesio.

At the end of the 19th century  the monastery was gradually transformed into an alpine summer resort and in 1915 , at the outbreak of world war 1 , the great hotel, once Monastery, closed down.