Chapter House or Palm Room · Oseira (EN)

The old Chapter Room, which is accessed from the previous room through a molded door with ears typical of 18th century baroque, is very important and very attractive. The floor plan and layout of this singular room, probably built in the last decades of the 15th or first decades of the 16th century, are the same as those of the chapter rooms of the medieval Cistercian monasteries, that is, a square floor divided into nine compartments by means of four central columns. The originality is found, above all, in the columns and vaults. The twisted and fluted columns with twisted moldings, decorated with quatrefoil flowers, rest on smooth cylindrical bases and the vaults rest directly on the shaft, without capitals. From the walls depart the ribs of corbels located at a medium height, some with simple moldings, others with capricious decoration of small arches. The vaults are ribbed with curved ribs and abundant ribs that converge in keystones with decoration in relief, polychrome with branches and caricatured faces with merely decorative intention. It is clear the relationship of this architecture with such a marked decorative will, with the Portuguese Manueline style. The walls are articulated in the remaining walls with semicircular arches that housed altarpieces with panels in relief, as Peralta relates; abundant drawers and large mirrors made up the sumptuous decoration of this sacristy since 1642, when the abbot Simón Rojo gave this destination to the old chapter house.