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Monastery of San Clodio

Leiro, Ribeiro, Ourense

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

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Monastery of San Clodio

Monument · Leiro, Ribeiro, Ourense

Monastery of Leiro (Orense), on the banks of the river Avia, whose origins tradition places in the 7th century, although the earliest document dates its foundation to 928. It joined the Cistercian order in 1225, as a daughter house of Melón, and enjoyed its greatest splendour in the 13th century, when the three-nave, three-apse church was built between 1220 and 1250, with a rose window -now bricked up- one of the few medieval Cistercian façades in Galicia. It retains two cloisters, one Renaissance in style, from the school of Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón. Abandoned after the Mendizábal disentailment of 1835, it was refounded in the late 19th century as a Benedictine monastery with monks from Samos, a community that died out at the end of the 20th century; it was declared a national monument in 1931. Today it is a heritage hotel, and San Clodio is considered a cradle of Ribeiro wine.

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

What to see and do in Leiro