(OPINION) At a time when being quarantined is the fate that has befallen so many people around the world as a coronavirus outbreak spreads, my urge has been to look at what history can tell us about events like the one we are all currently experiencing.

Italy, for example, remains on lockdown after the contagion rapidly spread there over a span of just a few weeks. Birthplace of the Renaissance, Italy is a resilient place. It has endured thousands of years of conquest, turmoil and strife. Something like COVID-19 isn’t even the first time disease has ravaged its people.

The threat of infection has united citizens in many ways behind the frequent washing hands and buying of toilet paper. At the same time, religious people seeking sacred spaces have found that spiritual desire a potential health hazard. The events of the past few days remind me of The Met Cloisters, a museum located in New York City. Nestled in the northern most tip of Manhattan, The Cloisters is the closest thing to visiting Europe’s past and not having to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Why focus on this place in the time of COVID-19? As a noun, cloister means a covered walk in a convent with a wall on one side and a colonnade open on the other. As a verb, it means to go into seclusion. The connection between a monastery — during Lent when Christians around the world prepare for Easter — and self-isolation makes The Cloisters more relevant than ever.

The museum, which resembles a castle perched on a hill, contains a large collection of medieval art and is centered around four cloisters — the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem, Bonnefont and Trie — that was moved from France to New York in 1931 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thanks to philanthropist John D. Rockefeller who bankrolled the move and purchased the land that would house the museum, The Cloisters remains a cultural gem that allows visitors the chance to see paintings, illuminated manuscripts and tapestries from the Middle Ages. It was announced Thursday that The Cloisters would temporarily close due to the deadly virus.

As a child, my parents would take me every summer to Italy, the country of their birth, to visit family. This ancient country has seen its share of hard times. Two world wars and earthquakes have combined to kill thousands of people — and that was in the 20th century alone. The center of the Roman Empire and later Christianity (the Vatican is now its own city-state within Rome), Italy has been brought to its knees by COVID-19 after the outbreak spread there from China.

It isn’t the first time. The Bubonic Plague — also known as The Black Death — devastated much of Asia and Europe for three hellish years starting in the year 1347. The plague, which resulted in the death of 100 million people around the world , was an unprecedented human tragedy in Italy after spreading up the peninsula to the rest of the continent. As a result, it marked an end of an era in Italy and resulted in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and religious changes, according to noted historian Jacob Burckhardt, author of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

The blog DailyHistory.org noted how the virus quickly spread: