Logbook · 4 places

Monastery of Santa María de Melón

Melón, Ribeiro, Ourense

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

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Monastery of Santa María de Melón

Monument · Melón, Ribeiro, Ourense

The monastery of Santa María de Melón, founded by the Cistercian Order in 1158 thanks to a donation from King Alfonso VII, remained inhabited until 1835, when the Mendizábal disentailment forced the surviving part of the church to be closed off with a façade, today used as the parish church; much of the monastery's stone was sold to build the church of A Cañiza. Of the complex only the semicircular portal, flanked by cylindrical towers with loopholes, and the ruins of two medieval cloisters survive. In the church, the 12th- and 13th-century apse stands out, with a Gothic ambulatory and burial chapel that emulates that of the monastery of Oseira: ruins of great scale, unique in Galicia alongside those of Oseira and Sobrado. It was declared a historic-artistic monument on 3 June 1931.

Photo: Keuk (CC BY-SA 2.0 de)

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