Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
87
LAN
B4
(see 32)
88
Sky Airline
A5
There are two ways of visiting Santa Catalina. One is to wander around on your own,
soaking up the meditative atmosphere and getting slightly lost (there's a finely printed
miniature map on the back of your ticket if you're up for an orienteering challenge). Al-
ternatively, informative guides who speak Spanish, English, French, German, Italian and
Portuguese are available for S20. The tours last about an hour, after which you're wel-
come to keep exploring by yourself, until the gates close. The monastery is also open two
evenings a week so that visitors can traipse through the shadowy grounds by candlelight
as nuns would have done centuries ago.
For visitors who undertake a self-tour of Santa Catalina, a helpful way to begin is to fo-
cus a visit on the three main
cloisters
. After passing under the
silencio
(silence) arch you
will enter the
Novice Cloister
, marked by a courtyard with a rubber tree at its center.
After passing under this arch, novice nuns were required to zip their lips in a vow of sol-
emn silence and resolve to a life of work and prayer. Nuns lived as novices for four years,
during which time their families were expected to pay a dowry of 100 gold coins per year.
At the end of these four years they could choose between taking their vows and entering
into religious service, or leaving the convent - the latter would most likely have brought
shame upon their family.
Graduated novices passed onto the
Orange Cloister
, named for the orange trees
clustered at its center that represent renewal and eternal life. This cloister allows a peek
into the
Profundis Room
, a mortuary where dead nuns were mourned. Paintings of the
deceased line the walls. Artists were allotted 24 hours to complete these posthumous
paintings, since painting the nuns while alive was out of the question.
Leading away from the Orange Cloister,
Córdova Street
is flanked by cells that served
as living quarters for the nuns. These dwellings would house one or more nuns, along with
a handful of servants, and ranged from austere to lavish depending on the wealth of the in-
habitants. Ambling down
Toledo Street
leads you to the cafe, which serves up fresh-
baked pastries and espresso drinks, and finally to the communal washing area where ser-
vants washed in mountain runoff channeled into huge earthenware jars.
Heading down
Burgos Street
toward the cathedral's sparkling
sillar
tower, visitors
may enter the musty darkness of the communal kitchen that was originally used as the
church until the reformation of 1871. Just beyond,
Zocodober Square
(the name comes
