Porta Coeli Charterhouse is located on a rural site of the municipality of Serra de Porta Coeli in the province of Valencia, Spain. The name of the charterhouse, Porta Coeli, means door of heaven.
The monastery was founded in 1272 under the sponsorship of Andrés Albalat, Bishop of Valencia and confessor of James I of Aragon. From this monastery came the monks to found the charterhouses of Ara Christi and Via Coeli.
The monastery was suppressed in the 19th century, and although it tried to regain the site, the order did not return until 1943, with reconsecration in 1947. It was used as a Francoist concentration camp between 1939 and 1941. It remains the only cloistered men's monastery in the province.
Construction at Porta Coeli began at its foundation and continued for centuries, giving the monastery its eclectic architectural contributions. The church is mainly Gothic in style, from the 14th century. In the 18th century it underwent a major Baroque restructuring. Among the works in the church are paintings depicting scenes from the New Testament (18th century) by the painter José Camarón Bonanat. It has portraits of the monks Juan de Nea, Francisco de Aranda, Bonifacio Ferrer and Francisco Maresme. The ceiling was frescoed by Luis Antonio Planes. Visits to the cloisters are limited.
References:The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.
The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.
The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.