View Article: In the Cloister, Where Will You Go?

	In the Cloister, Where Will You Go?
	written by leahs2 / 10.24.2005

Silence and Belief

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Assignment

My photo on-site.

Cloister of Santa Clemente

My photo on-site.

Cloiste of Santi Quattro Coronatie

In order to enter the church of Santa Clemente you must walk through the cloister. After a brief exploration of the church, you are drawn back to the cloister for some unknown reason. It is a simple, basic entrance for the gilded church built according to the basic Roman principles of symmetria. Just inside the outer wall is a pseudo-wall of colonnades; from the four corners small paths lead to the center of the cloister, which is marked by a fountain. You sit at the edge leaning against a column: it is strangely peaceful here. Compared to the grand, gilded, spatially overwhelming church basilica of Santa Clemente, the cloister is manageable. You can sit and look around and contemplate the structure in the fresh air.

Santi Quattro Coronatie is a church of mystery and surprise. You and your friends are revealed to the cloister by the opening of a dark, opaque door: you are stunned to realize you could easily have missed it. As the door opens the secret cloister appears before you.

You enter the delicate, gently charming space. The light is dim, the sound from the outside street gone, and time hangs in the soft air. Delicate colonnades create dark aisles that frame the open center of streaming air and light.

Suddenly the cloister appears to you a blank palate.
How will you place yourself in this architectural space???
What will you do to rest in this cloister?
How will you interact with the space?

The questions are etched in the air but you do not know the answers, and so you begin to walk around the aisle (or more likely, the cloister is moving you about its aisle). You find yourself at the opposite corner from where you entered, sitting in the ledge provided by the colonnades, your back supported by the end column and your legs wrapped around another. You lean your head back, your neck muscles release, and you give up your weight to the support of the stone wall that embraces and gently whispers to your body. The cloister tugs at the threads of your tightly wound clothing as you become an appreciator of space.

Your friends have been drawn to their own picturesque locations and activities in the slight breeze of serenity. You drift into the lull of aesthetic contemplation. The cloister is softly whispering to you the importance of stopping and listening in order to see and interact. You watch as your classmates become philosophers of space, time, and history.

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