The Lonja de la Seda or Llotja de la Seda (Silk Exchange) is a late Valencian Gothic-style civil building in Valencia. It is a principal tourist attraction in the city and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Built between 1482 and 1533, it is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a secular building in late Gothic style of outstanding artistic value. It bears eloquent witness to the role played in the Mediterranean and far beyond by the merchants of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th and 16th centuries.
la Lonja is composed of three parts. The main hall, Sala de Contratación (The Trading Hall), is a large lavishly decorated space supported by gorgeous twisted columns. This was the financial centre of La Lonja, where the merchants work out contracts. The side-wing is named the Pavilion of the Consulate, and this was the seat of the Tribunal del Mar - the first marine merchant tribunal to ever be formed in Spain. The first two floors were the main function rooms, with the upper one hosting a richly decorated ceiling. These rooms are still maintained original furnishings. On occasion, the Tribunal would imprison merchants for debts in the central tower of La Lonja - the third part of the structure.
In addition to being a very representative example of medieval places of commerce, the building incorporates elements of the new architectonic language that developed in Europe at the end of the 15th century incorporating the most daring progress in the field of construction techniques (admirable twisted columns and vaults of remarkable complexity, all in freestone of the highest quality).
Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).