Vacation Review: New York Day 3 (part 1)
Day Three was Good Friday, an important day in the Church Calendar. Serendipity stepped in and we visited the Cloisters on this day. I say this because we had low expectations about our visit, but, as we were studying medieval times, thought this would be a good place to visit. In the end, it turned out to be a very spiritual experience for us.
Located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, the building incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters–quadrangles enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway, or arcade–and from other monastic sites in southern France. Three of the cloisters reconstructed at the branch museum feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals. Approximately five thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about A.D. 800 with particular emphasis on the twelfth through fifteenth century, are exhibited in this unique and sympathetic context. (via http://www.ny.com/museums/cloisters.html )
On Friday morning we hopped on the subway a block from our apartment, and within 20 minutes we were at the northern part of Manhattan island. We had planned on spending an hour or so at the Cloisters, but spent over three hours there. The setting and ambiance put us in a contemplative mood as we wandered through the castle-like structure.
The structure itself is amazing as it made of actual structures of different cloisters including some of the doors, walls, gates, etc.
The garden is very serene too.
But we found the tapestries to be the most impressive pieces. These are very old and very stunning. The scale of these tapestries is incredible, they fill up entire walls in some cases. We also loved seeing some of the pieces from 500-1000 AD, some older. Our favorite piece was a rosary bead about the size of a golf ball with intricate carvings on it.
While I wouldn’t say this is New York’s best kept secret, we went during the week and it was not crowded, and many people we spoke to about it, including locals, gave us a similar response, “I’ve heard about it, but never gone.”
To visitors and locals alike, I say emphatically, “Go.”
Links
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/the_cloisters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters
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