It will be best, in describing the buildings here, to begin with those of the earliest date, though they are of comparatively unimportant character, and in part fragments only of old buildings preserved in the midst of great works undertaken at a later date. The Benedictine convent of San Pablo del Campo, said to have been founded in the tenth century by Wilfred II., Count of Barcelona,[278] was restored by Guiberto Guitardo and his wife about 1117, and in 1127 was incorporated with the convent of San Cucufate del Vallés.[279] The church is very interesting. It is small and cruciform, with three parallel apses, an octagonal vault on pendentives over the Crossing, and a short nave, which, as well as the transepts, is covered with a waggon-vault. The apses are vaulted with semi-domes. The west end is the only perfect part of the exterior, and deserves illustration. The work is all of a very solid and rude description, though I am almost afraid to give it credit for being so old as is said. The circular window is, however, an interpolation; and if this were removed, and another small window like the others inserted in its place, the whole design would no doubt have an air of extreme antiquity. The ground-plan is a typal one here, and prevails more or less in all the early churches from Cataluña to Galicia. One or two others of the same description seem to have a fair amount of evidence of the date of their consecration, and it is at any rate unlikely that a church built in A.D. 914 would require rebuilding in about a hundred years, which must have been the case here, if we assume that we have not still before us the original church. On the south side of the nave there was a cloister added, probably in the course of the eleventh century, and there is some difference in the character of its design and workmanship, and that of the church and its west front. This cloister is very small, having on each side four arches, divided by a buttress in the centre of each side. The openings are cusped some with three and some with five heavy foliations, plain on the outside, but both moulded and carved on the inside face. The cusping is not at all Gothic in its character, being stilted in a very Eastern fashion, nor is it constructed like Gothic work, the stones being laid over each other, and cut out in the form of cusps, but not constructed anywhere with stones radiating on the principle of an arch. The shafts between the openings are coupled one behind the other, and have well-carved capitals. A fourteenth-century doorway, with a cross for the finial of its label, opens from the north wall of the cloister into the nave; and in the east wall is an extremely good entrance to the Chapter-house of the same date, and showing the usual arrangement of a doorway with a two-light traceried opening on either side. There are also some old monumental arches in the walls.