Ancient Spanish Monastery in Miami Beach

If you’ll accept a contender that spent most of its life on the other side of the Atlantic, then Saint Bernard de Clairvaux Church is Florida’s oldest building. Construction commenced in Sacramenia, Spain in 1133. Almost eight centuries later, it was smuggled to New York by William Randolph Hearst in 11,000 packing crates, later finding its way to North Miami Beach. Construction of the Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux has begun in the year 1133 AD in Sacramenia, near Segovia in northern Spain. Completed eight years later in 1141, the Monastery was dedicated to the Blessed Mother. Cistercian monks occupied the Monastery for nearly 700 years. After a social revolution in the 1830s​, the Monastery’s Cloisters were seized, sold, and converted into a granary and stable. It took 19 months and the equivalent of nearly $20 million dollars (in today’s currency) to put the Monastery back together. In 1953 Time magazine called it the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history. However, purists will no doubt prefer to award the honor of oldest building to Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine, built in 1695 and also the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. Come and visit South Florida and it's beautiful story. It all start here: www.vrbo.com/1495343?unitId=2054049 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IscTYf1PzP0