Monastery World Map
Travel guides & inspiration
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The Mendicant Movement: How Franciscans and Dominicans Brought Religious Life into the City
In the early thirteenth century the friars of Francis and Dominic abandoned rural seclusion for the streets, squares and universities of Europe's booming towns.
From Cloister to Lecture Hall: How Monastic Schools Gave Rise to the University
Trace the thousand-year road from Benedictine cloister schools and cathedral chapters to the chartered universities of the High Middle Ages.
Monasticism and the Carolingian Renaissance: How Monasteries Became Engines of Learning under Charlemagne
Under Charlemagne, monasteries became the intellectual power stations of Europe — copying texts, training scholars and inventing the script you are reading right now.
The Monastic Cloister Explained: Architecture and Life Around the Garth
The cloister was far more than a pretty courtyard — it was the circulation system, reading room and symbolic heart of the medieval monastery.
Read more →From Cloister Gardens to Chartreuse: How Monks Shaped Herbal Medicine and Liqueurs
From the physic gardens of medieval abbeys to the secret recipe of Chartreuse, monks turned herbal healing into a lasting and surprisingly delicious art.
Read more →Trappist Beer: How Monks Brew and What the Authentic Label Really Means
Inside the small circle of monasteries allowed to call their beer Trappist, and the strict rules of prayer, labour and charity behind the hexagonal seal.
Read more →The Great Medieval Abbesses: Hilda, Hildegard and the World of the Double Monastery
From a windswept headland at Whitby to the vineyards of the Rhine, medieval abbesses ruled communities of both men and women, hosted synods, wrote visionary theology and corresponded with emperors.
Read more →Hildegard of Bingen: The Abbess Who Turned a Cloister into a Universe
Hildegard of Bingen wrote theology, composed chant, studied herbs and founded two monasteries — all from within the enclosure of a 12th-century Benedictine cloister.
Read more →The Dissolution of the Monasteries: How Henry VIII Ended a Thousand Years of English Monastic Life
In just four years, Henry VIII dismantled more than eight hundred religious houses in England and Wales — a revolution whose ruins still mark the land.
Read more →The Desert Fathers and the Origins of Monasticism
Anthony, Pachomius and the hermits of Roman Egypt shaped a way of life in the desert that grew into the worldwide monastic tradition.
Read more →Weltenburg Abbey: Beer, Baroque and the Danube Gorge
On a gravel bank where the Danube forces its way through limestone cliffs, Weltenburg Abbey has kept the Benedictine hours and brewed dark beer for centuries.
Read more →Santa Catalina in Arequipa: A Walled City of Nuns in the Andes
Behind high sillar walls in the heart of Arequipa lies an entire miniature city of streets, plazas and cloisters, built for Dominican nuns and closed to the world for almost four centuries.
Read more →Erdene Zuu: Mongolia's Oldest Monastery on the Ruins of Karakorum
Founded in 1585 beside the ruins of Karakorum, Erdene Zuu has outlived empires, invasion and purges to remain Mongolia's oldest surviving Buddhist monastery.
Read more →Gandantegchinlen Monastery: The Beating Heart of Mongolian Buddhism
Founded in 1838 and nearly erased in the purges of the 1930s, Gandantegchinlen Monastery in Ulaanbaatar today anchors the revival of Mongolian Buddhism.
Read more →Debre Damo: The Ethiopian Monastery You Can Only Reach by Rope
On a sheer-sided mountain in northern Ethiopia, monks haul visitors up a cliff by leather rope to one of the oldest churches in the country.
Read more →