Convent of Santa Maria de Mave in Santa María de Mave, Spain

 This building is in the village of Santa Maria  de Mave ,  The village takes  name from the church and convento at its centre and is close to the larger settlement of Mave close to the border of  Cantabria and Castile y Leòn .

In Spain the term  Convento is used to distinguish the institution  as housing a group of religious members of an order which is active in the community  in which it is based as opposed to a contemplative, isolated  order in which case the building would be termed a monestery. To a certain  extent the terms are interchangeable  and the term “convent” certainly  does not imply that the residents were nuns. In this case the occupants were male friars. The term Monastario is often applied nowadays to the church building directly attached to the Convento with the Romanesque church being in its original religious form (with with a triple apse and three naves,  a bell wall, currently with resident white storks, and a tall dome over the transept). The Convento has been converted from the cloister (rebuilt in the 18th century) to a boutique hotel with a restaurant  and a bar/cafeteria. The conversion  has been done sympathetically with many original feature retained but the architect clearly has a love for the modern. Some of the bedrooms are actually in the monk’s cells.

The origins of the Convento and the associated church date as far back as the second half of the 9th century. The abbey was founded by King Alphonse III . In 1033, Mave and its possessions became part of the important Benedictine monastery of San Salvador de Oña, in Burgos. Nothing remains of the ancient Pre-Romanesque structure.