The Cloisters

Somebody dismantled five medieval European monasteries, shipped them across the Atlantic stone by stone, and rebuilt them on a hilltop in northern Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River. That somebody was John D. Rockefeller Jr.

The Cloisters opened on May tenth, nineteen thirty-eight, as a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated entirely to medieval European art. The building incorporates actual architectural elements from abbeys in Catalonia and southern France — cloisters from Sant Miquel de Cuixà, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Bonnefont-en-Comminges, and Trie-sur-Baïse were taken apart, crated, and reassembled here. It is not a reproduction. These are real twelfth- to fifteenth-century stones.

The collection holds around five thousand objects, including the Unicorn Tapestries — seven panels woven around fourteen ninety-five to fifteen oh five that are among the most famous artworks of the Middle Ages. The Mérode Altarpiece, painted around fourteen twenty-two, depicts the Annunciation in a Flemish domestic interior so detailed you can see the smoke rising from a recently extinguished candle.

Rockefeller also bought the land across the river — the Palisades — to ensure the view from the museum would never be spoiled by development. The surrounding Fort Tryon Park, also a Rockefeller gift, has gardens maintained by the same team that tends the Cloisters' medieval herb gardens. Most tourists never make it above Midtown. This is what they miss.