The Monastery of Alcobaça / Portugal
Vast, deep and quite overwhelming in its simplicity, the church’s Cistercian austerity confronts us as we stand on the threshold of the bare, threefold nave, without either an ornament or a side-chapel to distract us.....Still retaining its authenticity, the Monastery of Alcobaça has been spared any major alterations in almost 900 years of its existence. And in the words of UNESCO (who declared the building a World Heritage Site in 1989), ‘its size, the purity of its architectural style, the beauty of the materials and the care with which it was built make this a masterpiece of Cistercian Gothic art’.
The Monastery of Alcobaça / Portugal
Vast, deep and quite overwhelming in its simplicity, the church’s Cistercian austerity confronts us as we stand on the threshold of the bare, threefold nave, without either an ornament or a side-chapel to distract us.....Still retaining its authenticity, the Monastery of Alcobaça has been spared any major alterations in almost 900 years of its existence. And in the words of UNESCO (who declared the building a World Heritage Site in 1989), ‘its size, the purity of its architectural style, the beauty of the materials and the care with which it was built make this a masterpiece of Cistercian Gothic art’.