The Cloister

WORK IN PROGRESS
The Cloister of the Benedictines was in need of urgent maintenance work. We apologize for the temporary inconvenience! CoopCulture offers to all visitors of the Cloister an immersive 360 ° virtual reality experience for free, to discover the areas occupied by the construction site.

Leaning against the south side of the Cathedral is the Cloister, a place of fundamental importance for monastic life over the centuries, which today represents a very significant monument and one of the best preserved examples of Norman art in the western world.

It has a square structure with a length of 47 meters on each side, with a portico bordered by pointed arches supported by pairs of thin columns.

The arches are underlined by two decorated frames similar to those already seen on the facades or in the area of the apses, and have a very protruding under-arch which, with its ribbing, had the practical function of supporting structures in wood or other material.

The lilttle cloister and the king’s fountain
The lilttle cloister and the king’s fountain
In the south-west corner there is a delightful and small structure called “The Chiostrino” (little cloister). In its center there is a fountain with a long decorated stem that culminates in a sphere embellished with reliefs of human heads and lions, dancing figures and is called the “king’s fountain”.In the cloister, moreover, the capitals of... Read more »
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The “Capital of Dedication”
The “Capital of Dedication”
The most precious elements of the Cloister are perhaps the 228 splendid columns with their capitals, all different from each other, which constitute an incredible and surprisingly well preserved iconographic set. The subjects of the reliefs, which partly reflect the representations of the mosaics inside the cathedral and partly stand out from them, show a... Read more »
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Classic decoration and polychrome mosaics
Classic decoration and polychrome mosaics
The intense charm of the Cloister is completed by the multiform variety of the decorations of the columns, which range from mosaic and relief techniques, creating plays of light and reflections that change with the sunlight. In fact, there are polychrome mosaics typical of the arabic culture, abstract and geometric reliefs and also elaborate figurative... Read more »
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