España romanica: the monastery/commandery of San Juan de Duero in Soria
During the Middle Ages, the town of Soria in Castille was home to several orders having to do with the Holy Land. Among them were the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, who were given a little church by the side of River Duero, outside of the town itself so that they could build a hospital and even a leprosy —not too far from the main road, yet out of the way to avoid the plague spreading. The church was, and still is, pretty nondescript, and can still be seen as such today. The Hospitallers re-did the vaulting of the single apse but, more spectacularly, built two astounding ciboria, those Oriental canopies of stone that cover and protect the altars. Two new altars were built underneath them, so that the knights/monks could perform their traditional rites and follow their own early Syrian church-inspired liturgy.
Truly, stepping inside that church and seeing those is like being transported to the Mediæval Orient!
Now, trying to produce decent photography of monuments is never easy, but when busload upon busload of tourists come into play, it borders on impossible! Furthermore, and this is the only time it ever happened to me in Spain (contrary to Italy, alas!), I was ordered by some repressed prison warden (judging by her amiability and kindness) posing as the welcome (very much so!) person for the monument, not to use the tripod to take pictures! And why, pray? Because that’s the way it is! Unbelievable. As I am cleverer than she was, I managed to beat the system and snap the first two or three exposures on the tripod at ISO 64, but for the rest, I had to bump up the ISO to 500 to accommodate whatever little light there was. Sorry for the resulting loss of quality.
Besides that amazingly “orientalized” church, the cloister is the main reason people come visit this ancient place. Art historians reckon it was built around 1200 by mudéjar architects and masons, maybe from Toledo. It is an absolutely unique achievement, unlike anything else I had seen before, and I’m probably not about to see the like of it anytime soon!
This is the craziest part of the Orient-inspired or mudéjar colonnade in the cloister: an arch resting on... nothing! No, there is no column missing, the arch was designed to be like that, and has remained firmly in place for 800 years...
España romanica: the monastery/commandery of San Juan de Duero in Soria
During the Middle Ages, the town of Soria in Castille was home to several orders having to do with the Holy Land. Among them were the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, who were given a little church by the side of River Duero, outside of the town itself so that they could build a hospital and even a leprosy —not too far from the main road, yet out of the way to avoid the plague spreading. The church was, and still is, pretty nondescript, and can still be seen as such today. The Hospitallers re-did the vaulting of the single apse but, more spectacularly, built two astounding ciboria, those Oriental canopies of stone that cover and protect the altars. Two new altars were built underneath them, so that the knights/monks could perform their traditional rites and follow their own early Syrian church-inspired liturgy.
Truly, stepping inside that church and seeing those is like being transported to the Mediæval Orient!
Now, trying to produce decent photography of monuments is never easy, but when busload upon busload of tourists come into play, it borders on impossible! Furthermore, and this is the only time it ever happened to me in Spain (contrary to Italy, alas!), I was ordered by some repressed prison warden (judging by her amiability and kindness) posing as the welcome (very much so!) person for the monument, not to use the tripod to take pictures! And why, pray? Because that’s the way it is! Unbelievable. As I am cleverer than she was, I managed to beat the system and snap the first two or three exposures on the tripod at ISO 64, but for the rest, I had to bump up the ISO to 500 to accommodate whatever little light there was. Sorry for the resulting loss of quality.
Besides that amazingly “orientalized” church, the cloister is the main reason people come visit this ancient place. Art historians reckon it was built around 1200 by mudéjar architects and masons, maybe from Toledo. It is an absolutely unique achievement, unlike anything else I had seen before, and I’m probably not about to see the like of it anytime soon!
This is the craziest part of the Orient-inspired or mudéjar colonnade in the cloister: an arch resting on... nothing! No, there is no column missing, the arch was designed to be like that, and has remained firmly in place for 800 years...