The Cloisters Museum
These tours require admission to the Museum:
12 pm: Highlights Tour of the Collection
1 pm: Garden Tour
2 pm: Gallery Workshop for Families
3 pm: Highlights Tour of the Collection
Please meet your guides in front of the main entrance for the tours
As a branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.
The cloister is located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park. There are five medieval French cloisters-quadrangles. The quadrangles are enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway, or arcade from other monastic sites in southern France. Three of the cloisters have been reconstructed. they now feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises. Poetry, garden documents, herbal's, also have been used as an information base. Medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows,were also used. The collection on the first floor of the Museum's main building on Fifth Avenue complements the more than six thousand objects on exhibit. A single curatorial department oversees medieval holdings at both locations. The collection at the main building displays a somewhat broader geographical and temporal range, while the focus at The Cloisters is on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. The Cloisters is renowned for its architectural sculpture. The Cloisters also rewards visitors with exquisite illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork, enamels, ivories, and tapestries.