The chapter house
Introduction

Back to the introduction to Saint Georges abbey

Chapter house

The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century. This room offers a number of areas of interest:

• It was built in the midst of the transition between the Roman and the Gothic periods.
• The openings onto the cloister have semicircular arches but the vaults have ribs and sculpted keystones.
• One rather rare feature is that it does not have any interior pillars.

The ribs of the vaults rest on sculpted springers with a flexible decoration of “water leaves”. It is richly decorated with capitals showing scenes from the Old Testament (Joshua, the taking of Jericho, Moses, the sacrifice of Isaac, etc.)