What do nuns look like?

Answer 1

Nuns look just like everyone else. They are human beings. However, if you are referring to what they wear it depends on what community they belong to. Communities of nuns are cloistered and usually wear a habit. Apostolic sisters can wear habits and some wear regular clothing depending on their community customs.

Answer 2

Nuns houses are simple, although if many live in a house, it may be a quite large, institutional house, similar to a nursing home with a commercial kitchen.

All convents, no matter how small, have a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and areas of cloister, where no outsiders may go, such as family rooms and bedrooms.

.

Catholic AnswerA nun is a religious woman living under solemn vows living a cloistered, contemplative life in a monastery. In other words, the vast majority of women whom you commonly see teaching school, nursing in a hospital, or otherwise working in a parish setting are not nuns, they are sisters - big difference. Thus, a nun's house would be a monastery, an enclosed building, although the Church itself has a grill which divides the area that the priest, server, and common folk can attend from the monastic portion. Likewise there are grills in the parlors - which are rooms in which you can visit, if you are a family member, or for some other reason that would receive permission from the Abbess. There was a Passionist monastery of nuns were I went to the minor seminary, they monastery was quite modern. If you wanted to visit, you went into a reception hall in which there was a turn (about three feet tall and a foot round), you rang the bell and spoke through a tiny window covered with a screen and a cloth, told the nun who you were and who you wanted to visit. The turn turned around and in the opening was a key. With the key you opened the door to the left or right (depending on which one Sister instructed you. Inside was a small room with a table and some chairs. The table was up against the one wall and running the length of the table to a height of about 2 1/2 feet was a window covered with a screen with a curtain on the other side of it. Mother Abbess would come in and talk with me. During Easter, once in a while, she would open the curtain so that I could see her.

.

The monastery would include their common room their work rooms, their cells, refectory, and the chapel. Depending on the age, location, and size, they can be very different all having the same basic necessities. St. Benedict specified for his monks (and nuns) that they should have everything available so big monasteries would have farms attached.

.

Below are three links, the first is the Abbey of Passionist nuns I spoke of in Kentucky, the second is a very old Trappist monastery (Cistercians of the Strict Observance) of nuns in France, and the last a Benedictine House of nuns in the Netherlands.