DORMITORY, the name given in monasteries to the monks' sleeping apartment. It sometimes formed one long room, but was more generally subdivided into as many cells or partitions as there were monks. The dormitories were sometimes of great length ; that of the monastery of S. Michele in Bosco near Bologna ( now suppressed) , is said to have been over 400 feet. In some of the larger Elizabethan mansions the space in the roof constitutes a long gallery, which in those days was occasionally utilized as a dormitory. The name "dormitory" is also applied to the large bedrooms with a number of beds, in schools and similar modern institutions, and also to any institutional building whose purpose is to furnish sleeping quarters for pupils or others, ir respective of whether or not they are divided into individual rooms.