São Bento Monastery, Olinda
Benedictine monastery of 1586 in Olinda's old town, known for its gilded altarpiece and Gregorian chant.
Benedictine monks from Bahia founded the monastery of São Bento in 1586, on a slope below the ridge of the colonial town of Olinda. The buildings were burned during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco in 1631 and rebuilt through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, giving the plain white front with its single tower and the cloisters behind. The monastery ran the first law course in Brazil in 1828 and still houses a working community, whose church forms part of the historic centre of Olinda inscribed by UNESCO in 1982.
The interior is dominated by the gilded main altarpiece, carved in cedar between 1783 and 1786 and attributed to Friar Francisco de Santa Maria, with a rococo canopy and spiralling columns covered in gold leaf. It was dismantled and restored in the late 1990s and shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2001 before returning to Olinda. The nave keeps its painted ceiling, carved pulpits and a stone chancel arch; the sacristy holds jacaranda furniture and blue and white tiling.
Highlights
- Gilded cedar altarpiece carved in the 1780s
- Church and cloisters within UNESCO-listed Olinda
- Sunday Mass sung in Gregorian chant by the community
- Sacristy with jacaranda furniture and Portuguese tiles
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