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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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