One of the strange things that could be seen in this cloister in medieval times was people playing quirkat.

Quirkat is a board game –made of stone– which you’ll find carved into the base of some of the arcades. The presence of this game affirms the fact that the cloister was also a place for games and entertainment. There are multiple versions of quirkat; it all depends on the number of pieces used. Thus, there is quirkat of III, quirkat of IX and quirkat of XII.

All the quirkats located in the cloister of the Seu Vella are quirkats from the C XII, as they would require 12 pieces for each player. For this reason, the boards contain 25 rounded cavities, 12 for each player, leaving only the central cavity free to start the game. The question, in any case, is: what would you play? We’ll help you! You could play an old version of checkers, but you could also take advantage of the quirkat board to play a game of tic-tac-toe, noughts and crosses.

Although the origin of quirkat is uncertain, it is known that Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were already familiar with it and that within the realm of Andalusia, it was very popular. In fact, the word quirkat comes from the arabic word “al-qariq”, which means “flat place”. In medieval times, quirkat was also typical and was documented in the Book of chess, dice and board games which King Alfonso X the Wise ordered written in the 13th century as a compendium of the main games of the era.