[Gocamino] The cathedral's "Choir"

[Blaroli at aol.com]

Hello you all,
When the Santiago Cathedral was first built, some thousand years ago, it had 
a stone "choir" (a section in the middle of the nave set apart and  
elaborately filled with chairs for the choir)  built by the celebrated genius Maestro 
Mateo. Magnificent and beautiful as it was, it was quite uncomfortable since the 
stone chairs were cold and humid, the structure was small and it did not have 
 a distinctive place for the Archbishop. 
Therefore, the stone "choir" was replaced by a wooden one at the beginning of 
the Seventeenth Century (1606). The choir consisted of 84 carved chairs 
situated at two levels in sort of a u-shape.  This choir was removed in the 1940's 
to accommodate the large number of people who began crowding the rather small 
Cathedral at the end of the Spanish Civil War.
The pieces were maintained at the Pilgrims' museum in Santiago and at the 
Museo Terra de Melide. 
To commemorate the Xacobean Holy Year, the Foundation Caixa Galicia donated 
500,000 Euros to reassemble the more than 8,000 pieces in their original form.
The job has been completed, and the rebuilt "Choir" can now be seen, in all 
its four-centuries historical splendor, fully assembled, in the church of the 
San Martin Penario Monastery.  
The original stone choir built by Maestro Mateo has been reproduced and is 
exhibited at the Cathedral's Museum.
Best regards,
Rosina