smell
Inside the cloister, which is the extension of the divine Word, the entire universe of human knowledge seems to be concentrated, glorified by the mystery of salvation, whose presence has been embraced by the sculptures and architecture for centuries. The Cloister Garden, according to tradition, is divided into four gardens where, in the centre, four symbolic trees are planted: the fig, the pomegranate, the olive and the palm.
The first two plants, refer to the Old Testament, as they are considered to be historical. The fig tree is located in the south-east and symbolises the Garden of Eden. The pomegranate tree is located in the north-east the garden of the Song of Songs.
For the New Testament, the presence of symbolic plants is notable. The Olive tree, an allegory of Gethsemane and therefore of the future Easter, is located to the north-east, while the Palm tree, in the garden of the Apocalypse, is located to the south-west.
Plants have always represented a message of ascetic rehabilitation, capable of enveloping those who pass through them in a kind of theophany that unfolds along the way.
sight
The Cloister is located next to the wall of the Cathedral’s northern aisle, and therefore in a non-canonical position in relation to the Orthodox layout of the monastic complexes, which places it next to the wall of the church’s southern aisle. The cloister is delimited, to the south, by the north aisle of the church and surrounded, to the east and west, by the conventual buildings with the canonical spaces of the Abbey: the chapter house, the refectory, the dormitory; while to the north, on the sea front, it is not unlikely that the cloister aisle could have remained in some way open to the horizon.
touch
The capitals of the columns in the Cefalù Cloister are characterised by original decorative motifs, emblematic of medieval art. Following its itinerary, made up of the transcendence of the circle inserted in the immanence of the square, we are invited to embark on a spiritual journey of purification that begins where the light sets, symbolically linked to Adam and the Old Testament, and then reaches the New Testament dimension, pervaded by the radiance of the incarnation and the promise. There are decorations with acanthus leaves placed in the initial part of the pair of capitals that proceed both upwards and downwards, following a common ornamental path. In particular, the leaves at the top widen in an arch, forming a crown that supports those at the bottom. The latter open outwards to form a right angle on which the figurative decoration with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations rests. The thirty-three pairs of historiated capitals, carved in a single block, show a sculptural apparatus with different iconography: narrative or figurative, with animals and with plants. So, there are scenes from the Bible, decorations with animals, such as monkeys, deer, eagles and fantastic animals (winged griffins), as well as human figures such as the six acrobats or the rulers with roosters.
