Monks came back to live in this monastery in 1929 after it had been taken away from them during the “exclaustración” era, the Spanish equivalent of the dissolution of the monasteries. Its church, made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has a Latin cross floor plan with a nave and two aisles, ambulatory and crossing supporting a ribbed squinch vault; the exterior lantern is very simple. The sacristy leads to a surprising chapter house, Gothic work of the fifteenth century, with barley-sugar columns running up to a fan vaulted ceiling; stairs lead from the church itself up to the bedroom. The main front of the church, adorned with shields and pinnacles, is flanked by two Baroque towers. It is a fine example of Galician Baroque, with monumental barley-sugar columns framing the portal.

Entrance to the monastery itself is through the eighteenth-century Claustro de los

Caballeros, a cloister with a grand seventeenth-century Herrerian staircase. This ushers you into the  sixteenth century courtyard called Patio de las Procesiones, decorated with forty medallions in the upper part. Another fine cloister is the sixteenth-century Claustro de los Pináculos, with an elegant fountain.

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