the National Art Museum of Catalonia. A gate separates the nave from the transept. Portals The main portal is located in the northern transept arm and faces the abbey square or Plaza Mayor. It features a semicircular arch and five archivolts supported by columns and capitals with foliate reliefs similar to the east gallery of the cloister and a tympanum sculpted with the Virgin and Child, surrounded by angels. Above it there is a cornice with a frieze of blind arcades with corbels sculpted with various motifs. Another doorway is located on the church's northern wall, but is now obstructed by a sarcophagus enclosed in an ogival arch as an arcosolium, on which there is a Trinitarian chrismon from the end of the 12th century. This wall has a total of five sarcophagi, four in Romanesque style (13th century) and one in Gothic style. All of them bear heraldic symbols and in two of them the names can be read: Sibil-la de Guimerà, wife of Guerau Alamany, and Miquela Sasala, from 1244. Cloister The cloister is on a quadrangular plan, whose sides, of different lengths, correspond to different successive ages and construction styles (12th-15th centuries). The oldest section, on the south, shows the original sober Romanesque-Cistercian canons: it has three spans formed by three piers, with three rounded arcades supported by columns with undecorated capitals. The eastern wing is also in Romanesque style (early 13th century), and has five spans divided by four pilasters, The arcades form triple mullioned windows with, in the mullions, small rose windows with decoration in Arabic style. The capitals of the columns have vegetable motifs. The northern wing is the shortest one; it has wide hollows with ogival traceries in Gothic style, dating to the 14th century. The western side, the most recent one, was built in the 15th century in proto-Renaissance style. The capitals of the columns show the heraldic symbols of the Caldés family, who produced the monastery's abbesses during that period. The chapter hall is accessed from the cloister through a Gothic gate built under abbess Anglesola in the 14th century, and has a cross-vault cover. The pavement features several tomb slabs of abbesses, and there is an alabaster image of the Virgin of Mercy, attributed to the sculptor Pere Johan. References Further reading 13th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Spain Monasteries in Catalonia Romanesque architecture in Catalonia Gothic architecture in Catalonia