Cloisters fascinate me. They have so, since I visited my first one about 27 years ago.
I can’t really tell why. Probably it’s because we have not so many old monasteries in Austria, and certainly not in Carinthia, where I was born. Actually Carinthia has always been a backward province, more rural than anything else.
During the age of Baroque there was a lot of money in Austria and Germany, therefore many of the old monasteries were rebuilt in baroque style, much like São Vicente.
Like there, the cloisters were largely representative. As a functional part of a monastery, the cloister is really a mediaeval concept. There were no “living” cloisters after Renaissance.
Add the fact, that most monasteries were secularized during the age of Enlightenment, and it becomes clear that I never had much chance to see good cloisters in Austria at all.
The first that I saw were in southern France, a region that waned in importance after its fall as an independent Occitaine and its de facto occupation by the north.
Among the most beautiful cloisters I always remembered the oriental splendor of Monreale in Sicily, the delightful elegance of Mont Saint Michel, and now the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos is also in that league.