A Barnard student’s guide: The Met Cloisters

The Met Cloisters, found in uptown Manhattan, is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated wholly to medieval art — and completely free for Barnard students! With its ancient doorways and vaulted ceilings, the museum transports you to the Middle Ages and even pokes a little fun at it with its current exhibition, “Spectrum of Desire.”

Photo by Julieta Skallman/The Barnard Bulletin

By Julieta Skallman

February 16, 2026

The Met Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that, as opposed to the Fifth Avenue location’s sprawling collection, is focused solely on medieval art. Completely free of charge for Barnard students and located at the very top of a hill in Fort Tryon Park, the entire museum is a two-floor building somewhat reminiscent of a monastery.

There are two options for Barnard students looking to make their way to the Met Cloisters: if you take the subway, a simple transfer from the 1 to the A drops you off right outside of Fort Tryon Park, letting you take the scenic route to the museum — scaling the steps up, winding through trees and climbing up through the park. However, if you have prefer convenience, the M4  bus picks you up at 116th Street and drops you off at the museum’s doorstep. Walk into the stone edifice and you are presented with a single hallway that leads to maps, a coat check, and, a little further ahead, the ticketing desk. Just show them your student ID and your ticket is printed out, free of charge.

Once inside, you are left to find your way around the imposing stone walls and through beautifully intricate doorways — most of which are actual doorways from the Middle Ages. One that stuck out to me was the Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean. If you head straight into the museum from the ticketing desk, it is one of the first doorways you go through: French, circa 1250, and huge.

Another striking doorway is the Unicorn Doorway. It is French, circa the early 16th century, and leads from Gallery 18 — called the Nine Heroes Tapestries Room, filled with floor-to-ceiling wool tapestries of (you guessed it) ancient heroes — to the museum’s most famous collection, housed in Gallery 17, the Unicorn Tapestries Room. Woven from wool and gilded with silver threads of silk, “The Unicorn Tapestries” are seven different tapestries depicting unicorns during various stages of the hunt. They are giant and intricately detailed. Most of the merchandise in the museum store is of a tapestry found in this gallery, called “The Unicorn Rests in a Garden,” depicting a white unicorn, which contrasts nicely against the dark green and floral background, in a round enclosure secured to a tree.

The Met Cloisters’ namesake is the four sets of cloisters it houses, brought from France. These cloisters are rectangular pockets of space with pillars along the perimeter. These pillars are essential to the characterization of cloisters. Three of these sets are presented as cloisters usually are: a square garden with these aforementioned pillars between it and the covered walks along the walls of the space. In the colder months of the year, these cloisters might be closed off. The Cuxa Coffee Cart, which takes over one of the covered walks of the Cuxa Cloister of the museum, is perfect for reading, working, or studying — and it is open in the winter! In warmer weather, more of the museum’s outdoor spaces are open, including the West Terrace, which offers visitors a view of the Palisades as well as of the Hudson River, and the Trie Café, both located in the museum’s lower level.

An exhibition that is open right now is called “Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages” and will be up until March 29, 2026. It  highlights that — despite the fact that most of the art during the period was about religion, church, and God — a lot of it was focused on the body, and on how people could use it (and art) to empower themselves. All this within the bounds of the church, of course.

For example, there is a book in the exhibition open to a page depicting the only sex position the church found acceptable, called “Conjugal Relations.” Furthermore, a painting, called “Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata,” depicts a saint who mystically married Jesus, centuries after Jesus had died. And another book called “The Rothschild Canticles” is open to a page depicting a woman that, as the Met Cloisters website says, is “enjoy[ing] a rapturous moment of mystical union with Christ.” These pieces, among others in the exhibition, may be absurd to the modern viewer but work to deepen the visitor’s understanding of life in the Middle Ages. Sex has always been a topic of interest for people, even if the church happened to be the one telling people how to do it. Furthermore, if people go see this exhibition, I think they might be surprised at the ways, which feel modern and maybe unexpected, in which people expressed their devotion to God, or the ways in which people expressed their lust.

All in all, the Met Cloisters, with its arched ceilings, stained glass windows, and gardens, is an immersive experience. In a park, elevated above the buildings that surround it, once you step through its doors, the Met Cloisters — its ancient doorways, beautiful gardens (though currently frozen or blocked off), and rotating exhibitions — transports you to a different time. It is a wonderful place to go if you find yourself sick and tired of the modern world, or maybe if you are looking for some of it in the past — or if you just want to feel like you are in a medieval castle.