San Vicente de Oviedo is a church and monastery in Oviedo. Its foundation, in 761, is recorded in a charter known as the Pacto monástico de Oviedo ('Monastic Pact of Oviedo') a copy made in the 12th-century of the original that is dated 25 November 781 and is considered the earliest document on the monarchy of the Kingdom of Asturias. Although doubts exist as to the veracity of this document since the monastery, also called Antealtares in the Middle Ages, is not mentioned again until 969. According to the charter of 781, twenty years before, in 761, the monks Máximo, with his serfs, and Fromestano, founded a church in locum quod dicunt Oveto (the place called Oveto), which was to become the city of Oviedo.
Transformed into a monastery, the first abbot was Oveco, documented between 969 and 978, and the first reference mentioning that it followed the Benedictine Rule is dated in 1042.
The style of the building is Romanesque, although reworked in the 11th and 12th centuries. Its cloister is an official National Historic and Artistic Monument and since 1952 houses the Archaeological Museum of Asturias.
The Archaeological Museum of Asturias hosts collections of the Asturian Neolithic, Megalithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Astur hill fort culture, Roman period, and of the Gothic, Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque periods of the Kingdom of Asturias. The museum also includes sections of Asturian Ethnography, Heraldry, Medieval and Modern Epigraphy, Spanish Numismatics, a European Medal Section, and Armor.
References:Visby Cathedral (also known as St. Mary’s Church) is the only survived medieval church in Visby. It was originally built for German merchants and inaugurated in 1225. Around the year 1350 the church was enlarged and converted into a basilica. The two-storey magazine was also added then above the nave as a warehouse for merchants.
Following the Reformation, the church was transformed into a parish church for the town of Visby. All other churches were abandoned. Shortly after the Reformation, in 1572, Gotland was made into its own Diocese, and the church designated its cathedral.
There is not much left of the original interior. The font is made of local red marble in the 13th century. The pulpit was made in Lübeck in 1684. There are 400 graves under the church floor.