Kitchen of Alcobaça Monastery

I was very impressed with the architecture of the monastery of Alcobaça. It wasn’t just the church that was designed very well but the rest of the buildings as well. The monastery was one of the most important in Europe so there would be people form all over coming here. As a result, all sorts of facilities needed to be built and support the large number of people staying here. One of these facilities is the kitchen. I was expecting more like a simple room with a working area but it was totally different from what I had imagined.

The kitchen is dominated by a massive chimney where all the smelly air with go through. I believe this is the first time I have seen one this large and I was having difficulty understanding how it works. The area directly under the chimney isn’t very large nor is it tall. If people would really cook underneath it, it would be have been difficult to do anything with the massive chimney in the way. Perhaps there was no need for that if for example, they were merely grilling chicken, then a large grill of chicken would be push under the chimney above some charcoal and you don’t really need much space for that. These days, there is not thing under the chimney so people can just walk under the chimney and have a look. You can actually see all the way up and that is probably the only light you can see there. Further along the kitchen, there is a pool like structure which apparently lets water in. The nearby river Alcoa was diverted so that some of the water would be passing through here.

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