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Founded by the Duke of Calabria, the San Miguel de los Reyes Monastery is one of the best examples of the Valencian Renaissance, and can be considered the prototype for El Escorial, as it was designed to be a Royal Pantheon, a Hieronymite monastery, a college and a church. However, various mishaps prevented the project from being completed in its entirety. The two architects who designed it in 1546 were Alonso de Covarrubias and Juan de Vidaña. Following the death of the Duke, the construction was interrupted for more than twenty years. Other criteria were then considered, but the first group of buildings fully assumes the Renaissance style.
Recently restored and inaugurated (in 1999) it serves as the Valencian Library.
References: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).