Sant Miquel de Cruïlles, Romanesque monastery in Cruïlles, Monells i Sant Sadurní de l'Heura, Spain.
Sant Miquel de Cruïlles is a Romanesque Benedictine monastery church with a basilical plan of three naves, a projecting transept and three semicircular apses. The three naves share a single gabled roof, with barrel vaults on cruciform pillars and semicircular transverse arches. A dome rises over the crossing, and Lombard double arcading between lesenes covers the apse end. The 11th-century west front was shortened in the 16th century, and a square tower stands on the south side.
The monastery was founded in the 11th century as a Benedictine community in the Catalonian countryside and functioned for centuries as a spiritual and economic center of the region. Its designation as a Cultural Asset of National Interest in 1931 recognized its importance to Spanish architectural heritage.
The monastery church is dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. Inside, the main apse keeps Romanesque wall paintings whose lower register imitates an oriental textile with curtains and three rows of white lions facing each other on a red ground; medieval graffiti also survive on the painted surface. Two Gothic ossuaries of the Cruïlles family, dated 1348 and 1393, stand in the church.
The monastery lies about 4 km from La Bisbal d'Empordà along the Cassà de la Selva road, in the hamlet of Sant Miquel de Cruïlles. The church is the surviving element; the old monastic rooms to its south were converted into a farmhouse and the cloister is gone, so visitors see the exterior and the church rather than a full monastic complex. Restoration work by the Consell Comarcal del Baix Empordà has been under way since 2008.
The monastery preserves medieval frescoes hidden beneath layers of plaster that were discovered during restoration work. These fragments reveal the artistic skills and religious subjects that mattered to the monks who built and decorated this space.
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