New York is the very essence of modern dynamism, a noisy jackhammer of a city going ninety-miles-an-hour around the clock. So it is always a delight to encounter something that goes against the speed and noise and bustle--something like the Cloisters. A campus of the Museum of Modern Art set in Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters is a collection of monasteries and ecclesiastical structures, assembled together to house a collection of medieval art.
Instructions
1. Find the Cloisters at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive at Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan. Enter the octagonal Main Hall. The bookstore is off to the right. Go straight ahead into the Romanesque Hall, which features three church doorways and a sculpture of Christ. Turn right into the Fuentidueña Chapel, taking note of the limestone sculptures of St. Martin of Tours and the Annunciation.
2. Step into the St.-Guilhem Cloister, which features columns and capitals from the French monastery of that name. The Mouth of Hell capital is especially interesting.
3. Go south back into the Romanesque Hall, then turn west into the Langon Chapel, which features two statues of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Turn left into the twelfth-century Pontaut Chapter House, then step out into the Cuxa Cloister, which showcases twelfth-century capitals. Go south into the Nine Heroes Tapestry Room; the tapestries depict ancient and medieval heroes.
4. Turn right, then right again into the Early Gothic Hall. The key sculpture here is the painted and gilded "Virgin from Strasbourg Cathedral." Now turn left and go down into the Gothic Chapel, where you'll see several tomb carvings.
5. Descend the stairs to the ground-floor level. The Glass Gallery showcases stained glass. The Bonnefont Cloister and Trie Cloister are of French origin; the latter is home to the museum's café. Back behind the Glass Gallery are the Treasure Rooms, containing delicate pieces of gold, silver and other precious materials.
6. Return to the main floor. To the left is the Boppard Room, which showcases stained glass. Straight ahead is the Unicorn Tapestries Room with six sixteenth-century tapestries, some of which you'll almost certainly recognize.
7. Backtrack into the Boppard Room. Off to the north is the Tapestry Hall, and to the right of it, the Spanish-themed Campin Room, named after the artist who created the Annunciation altarpiece here. Cross the Late Gothic Hall, stop into the bookstore, then go southeast out the entrance hall through the fifteenth-century Froville Arcade.
