A medieval cloister, an arcaded walkway surrounding an open courtyard, was usually a space at the heart of a monastery where a variety of highly regulated events in the lives of members of the religious order took place, including silent prayer, meditation, or reading aloud from holy books. The design for this cloister installed in the Museum is based on that at Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines in southwestern France, the source of some of the Museum's cloister capitals. In the center of the cloister stands a rare Romanesque fountain known to have come from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, the largest monastery in the eastern Pyrenees. The massive basin of the fountain is decorated with a continuous design of arches on columns that echo the elements of the cloister itself. Fountains served a variety of practical purposes in monasteries, such as providing water for shaving or washing clothes. Transplanted to a museum, the fountain and its cloister setting afford modern-day visitors a space for quiet thought. Eda Diskant, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p.109.