Located next to the former home of Christopher Columbus are these medieval cloisters which feel slightly out of place. That’s primarily as they are out of place, they’ve knocked the nearby church down but thought they’d like to keep these cloisters and so they moved them.
They were attached to the twelfth century Benedictine Monastery, but progress was progress and in the early twentieth century the city authorities wanted modernity and a better infrastructure, so the demolition took place in 1905.
They’re quite understated here, even though they’re next to a busy historic attraction. Which has the advantage that there’s no people, tourist shops or anything else cluttering the arrangement up.
The monastery’s existence had really ended in 1799 when the religious community was shut down by Napoleon. The monastery then became a college, then a prison and so the religious links had long since gone when they decided that the entire area needed clearing.