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Fire at the monastery of Samos

Samos, Sarria, Lugo

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Fire at the monastery of Samos

Historical milestone · Samos, Sarria, Lugo

Image of Samos, not of the place itself.

A devastating fire destroyed much of the Benedictine abbey of San Xulián de Samos in 1951, including its library, thirty-one metres long and holding twenty-five thousand volumes; the subsequent reconstruction restored to the complex the cloisters and outbuildings that can be visited today. It was not the monastery's first fire: founded, according to tradition, in the 6th century by Martiño de Dumio, it had already suffered another fire in 1558 that forced its complete rebuilding. The community was disbanded in 1835 and the monks returned in 1880. Among its outbuildings, the Claustro Grande stands out, built between 1685 and 1689, covering 3,000 square metres, the largest in Spain, and the baroque church, erected between 1734 and 1748, with a looped staircase reminiscent of the one at the Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela.

1951

Photo: José Antonio Gil Martínez from Vigo, Spain (CC BY 2.0)

What to see and do in Samos