If you're ever in NYC and have the chance to go up to the Cloisters, the Medieval branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I highly recommend it.

What a beautiful book! This text "breaks apart" the structure of the Cloisters (tiself assembled in a bit of a hodgepodge), taking individual elements and structures and examining them.

As an example of how accurate the descriptions are and how vividly it describes things: a few months after first looking at the book, I read a mystery in which there was a chase scene and a shootout (!) at the Cloisters. Because I had read this book, I was able to follow the *entire* scene and picture each major landmark mentioned. I hadn't been to the Cloisters in 10 years, but the book brought it all back that well!

This is more than a coffee table book; it deserves to be studied, not just propped up for looks. If you do get it, read it and do it justice! ( )