page_title: Nonneseter Abbey, Bergen
section_title: Site and buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Nonneseter Abbey, Bergen / Site and buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Nonnesaeter station
context_page_description: Nonneseter Abbey was a Cistercian nunnery in Bergen, Norway. A small part of the former abbey church remains in use as a chapel, the Nonneseter kapell.
context_section_description: The abbey was located on a promontory on the north bank of the Lillestrømmen, a stream which once connected two bodies of water, Store Lungegårdsvannet and Lille Lungegårdsvannet, approximately in the area of the present Kaigaten. The surviving buildings were mostly destroyed by a fire in 1891, and of the monastic buildings there remains nothing to be seen. Of the abbey church there survived the base of the west tower and the Nonneseter Chapel, originally the south chapel off the choir, which after the fire were acquired in 1891 by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Norwegian Monuments.
  The single storey remaining of the west tower, the Tårnfoten ("tower foot"), measures 8.6 metres square. It was originally clad with dressed stone. In the west wall is a portal with a round arch, and in the east wall another, which would have connected to the body of the church. It is now used as a memorial chapel to the fallen of World War II.
  The Romanesque tower foot is more old-fashioned in style than the body of the main church apparently was, indicating the possibility that it could have belonged to an older structure predating the arrival of the Cistercians with their characteristic building style. The church lay to the east of the tower. The original building was quite small, but seems to have been extended eastwards in the later 13th century with a new choir and choir chapels; it had a single aisle. The graveyard was to the north of the church, and the monastic buildings to the south, but there are too few remains of them to establish the exact layout. The site was archaeologically excavated in 1872 and again in 1892.
caption: Nonneseteren station on the Bergen Light Rail
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