Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos

Listen first. Under the arches of the cloister the gravel is quiet, and a single bird sometimes calls from the tall cypress in the middle of the garden. The air smells faintly of cold stone and clipped box hedge. If you arrive near the hour of prayer, you may hear something else: men's voices singing slow Latin chant from the church next door. Here, in a small village in the hills of Burgos province, that sound has filled these walls for many centuries.

You are standing in one of the oldest working monasteries in Spain. Benedictine monks still live, pray and work here. The Benedictines follow a rule written by Saint Benedict in the sixth century, built around prayer, study and manual labour. So this is not a museum with a monastery theme. It is a home. As you walk, you share the space with a community that keeps a daily rhythm of services, from before dawn until late evening.

The abbey carries the name of a real man. Dominic was a monk from the Rioja region who came here in the eleventh century, when the old monastery was poor and half ruined. As abbot, he rebuilt its buildings, its library and its finances. After his death he was honoured as a saint, and the village took his name. Santo Domingo de Silos simply means Saint Dominic of Silos.

Locals and pilgrims also remember Dominic as a protector of captives. In medieval Spain, Christians and Muslims took prisoners in frontier wars, and families prayed for their release. According to tradition, freed captives came here to give thanks, sometimes leaving their chains behind. There is another custom linked to the saint. For a long time, his abbot's staff was taken to the Spanish royal family when a queen was about to give birth, as a blessing for a safe delivery.

Now turn your attention to the cloister around you. It has two levels, and the lower one is the famous part. It is Romanesque — the style of Western Europe before Gothic, with rounded arches, thick walls and carved stone. Look at the columns. They stand in pairs, and in places the pairs bend or twist. The work was done in stages over the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, by different sculptors with different hands.

Walk slowly and look up at the capitals, the carved blocks on top of the columns. Many show creatures rather than saints. You will find lions with tangled tails, birds with long necks woven together, and harpies, which are monsters with a bird's body and a human face. Some of the motifs echo patterns from the Islamic art of southern Spain. Here is the first surprise for many visitors: in a Christian cloister, much of the decoration is not religious at all.

The Bible stories are at the corners. At each of the four corners, two large stone panels face each other, so there are eight in total. They show scenes such as the Descent from the Cross, the Ascension and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Find the panel of Thomas, the disciple who doubted the Resurrection. Christ lifts his arm, and Thomas reaches toward the wound in his side. The figures are long and still, with fine folds in their robes.

In the panel of the travellers to Emmaus, look closely at Christ's bag. It carries a scallop shell. The scallop shell is the badge of pilgrims who walk to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest of Spain. So the sculptor dressed Christ as a pilgrim on the road. Medieval visitors would have understood the joke and the message at once. Many walkers still pass through this region on their way to Santiago.

Next, look above your head. The galleries are covered with painted wooden ceilings in the Mudéjar style. Mudéjar is the name for art made by Muslim craftsmen, or in their tradition, living under Christian rule. These ceilings are later than the stone, from the late Middle Ages. In the small painted panels you can find hunting scenes, animals, musicians, knights and everyday figures. They are faded, but they are full of life once your eyes adjust to the dim light.

In the centre of the garden stands the cypress. It is tall, dark and narrow, and it points straight at the sky. The Spanish poet Gerardo Diego wrote a well-known sonnet about it in the twentieth century, describing it as a jet of shadow rising upward. Many Spanish schoolchildren learned that poem. So for Spanish visitors, this tree is almost as important as the carvings. Take a moment to stand in one corner and see how the tree lines up with the arches.

Here is the second surprise. The monastery has not always been alive. In the nineteenth century, the Spanish state closed and sold many monastic properties, and the monks of Silos had to leave. The buildings fell into neglect. Later in that century, a group of French Benedictine monks came and restored the community. The church you see beside the cloister is not Romanesque. It was rebuilt in the eighteenth century in a cooler Neoclassical style, with plain white walls and clear proportions.

The abbey was a centre of books in the Middle Ages, and some of its manuscripts are important for the history of the Spanish language. Notes written in the margins of an old Latin text from here, known as the Silos glosses, show early forms of a Romance language. Several of the monastery's medieval treasures are now in libraries abroad. Inside the abbey, the museum displays religious objects, and the old monastic pharmacy shows shelves of ceramic jars once used for medicines.

The chant is the final and most modern surprise. In the 1990s, a recording of the Silos monks singing Gregorian chant became an international bestseller. Gregorian chant is unaccompanied sung prayer in Latin, with a single melody line. Suddenly, people around the world knew the name of this small village. Yet the monks did not change their routine. They still sing the offices here every day, and visitors may join the services quietly.

Before you leave, stand still for one more minute. Notice how the light falls on the paired columns and moves across the gravel paths. Notice the sound of your own steps, and how softly people speak here. As you walk back into the village, look at the stone houses and the hills around them. The landscape outside the walls is much the same one Dominic saw when he arrived to rebuild this place.