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Founded in the early 12th century, Santa Maria de Vallbona de les Monges is the most important female Cistercian Monastery in Catalonia. From the time of its construction, in 1153, it has always been inhabited by nuns and currently forms part of the Cistercian Route (along with Santes Creus and Poblet).
The complex is representative of Cistercian art, faithful to the Rule of Saint Benedict. As can be seen in Vallbona de les Monges, it bypasses ornamentation, achieving sober and functional spaces.
During the visit to the Church, it is worth looking up for a moment. On the main portal (13th century), one can find one of the first reliefs of Santa Mariato appear on a tympanum in Catalonia. Once inside, the church is characterised by simplicity and the wonderful play of light. To the right of the altar there is the simple and plain sarcophagus of Queen Yolande of Hungary, wife of Jaume I the Conqueror.
The simplicity and austerity continues in the cloister, where one can clearly see the stages of construction. The south nave, primitive Romanesque, does not have any kind of decoration. The eastern nave, 13th-century Romanesque, features small rosettes. The northern nave is Gothic and, finally, the western nave is a Renaissance building from the 16th century, but it follows the general style of the Romanesque galleries.
The Cathedral of Santa Maria was built between the 12th and 14th century on the highest point of the city, in a place full of history. Previously there had been a 10th century mosque, a Christian Visigothic basilica and, earlier, a Roman temple. The Cathedral in Tarragona hides, within its foundations, an ancient temple dedicated to Augustus.
The existence of this building was known through numismatic and written references, although its location wasn’t stated. The most logical idea was that it would be found in the forum of the ancient ‘Tàrraco’ (the Roman name for Tarragona), where centuries later Christian temples were erected. In 2010, a team of archaeologists excavated the central nave of the Cathedral and laid bare the remains of the Roman temple.
The Cathedral itself, however, is a transitional work between Romanesque and Gothic periods; the former was then still current, and spread in the 12th century to many parts of the New Catalonia. In Tarragona later styles such as Gothic, coexisted with the Renaissance and the Baroque.
Notable are the three portals of the church, which correspond to its three naves: the main one is Gothic and the other two Romanesque. Looking up, however, you can see that the Cathedral is unfinished, due to the ravages caused by the black death.
The Gothic cloister, which leads to the Diocesan Museum, stands out for it extensive sculptural decoration. The more curious visitors can find an Arabic inscription dating from the year 960 from the ancient mosque and the representation of the popular legend of the burial of a cat by rats.
Inside, the presbytery and the central apse have a fully Romanesque element that one might pass without noticing: the pavement. It is made of stone and marble, coloured white, black, orange and yellow, and with geometric interlaced designs.
What doesn’t go unnoticed is the large organ. It was made in the 16th century, although in 1929 the mechanism and the pipes were replaced by those of the Romantic organ from the Palau Maricel in Sitges.
It is in the chapels, built in the 14th century, where the shift towards the Gothic and later styles is most evident. The most outstanding piece is the polychrome, alabaster altarpiece, which has sculptures of Santa Tecla, Santa Maria and Sant Pau.
The Girona Art Museum, founded in 1976, could not have chosen a better setting than the Episcopal Palace, from the 12th and 16th centuries, to host its collection. The museum has the third most important collection of Romanesque and Gothic art in Catalonia. The jewel in the crown is the portable altar from the monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, made of stone and wood covered with silver.
Notable also from the medieval collection is the polychrome Romanesque beam from the Monastery of Sant Miquel de Cruïlles, one of the few preserved in Europe. Or the Virgin of Besalú, considered one of the best Gothic examples of its kind. Names such as Bernat Martorell and Lluís Borrassà also have presence there.
But the art collection of the Girona Art Museum goes beyond the Middle Ages. It consists of 8,500 objects that span from the Greek colonies up to the twentieth century.Specifically, this last period also has a presence in the Museum with works by Joaquim Vayreda, Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Martí i Alsina.
The Palau de la Generalitat, located in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, is one of the few buildings of medieval origin in Europe that have been maintained as a seat of Government and for the same institution for which it was built.
The original house, on Carrer Sant Honorat, was acquired in 1400 and during the 15th century it was expanded and converted into a new gothic palace, the work of Marc Safont. Among the best preserved elements from this period are the Gothic Gallery and the Chapel of Sant Jordi.
During the 16th century, the Palau de la Generalitat grew with a new part which respected the previous Gothic style such as the Cambra Daurada (Golden Chamber) and the first Pati dels Tarongers(courtyard planted with orange trees). The most radical changes came with the extension towards the Plaça Sant Jaume (1597-1619): the current main façade was inspired by the Italian Renaissance, and there are four Doric columns of Roman origin dating from the 2nd century.
The last major changes in the building happened in the period of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya, the Catalan Commonwealth, (1914-1925): items such as the staircase of honour and the equestrian statue of Sant Jordi were added. Notable from the 1970s is the acquisition of more than a hundred pieces of modern, avant-garde and contemporary art by artists such as Montserrat Gudiol, Josep Maria Subirachs, Antoni Clavé, Joan Hernández Pizjuán, and Antoni Tàpies.
The current "boom" in Catalan cuisine has much in common with the first golden age of gastronomy of our country, which in the 14th and 15th centuries was considered the first in the Christian world, especially by the courts of Naples and Rome. This is reflected in documents such as the Llibre de Coch (Mestre Robert) or Com usar bé de beure e menjar (Francesc Eiximenis).
Far from the collective imagination that has Kings and nobles eating with their fingers, the Catalan medieval cuisine was noted for its refinement and its wealth of recipes both simple and exquisite. Becoming a symbol of social status, it also had gourmets and famous chefs, and was noted for its good table manners.
Despite not yet having products from America, there was a wealth of ingredients: cereals, all kinds of vegetables, spices and fresh fruit, nuts and dried fruit and pork. The rich added rice, noodles, poultry and game, and fresh or dried fish to their diet.
Catalan cuisine is also innovative from this period because for the first time women could participate in banquets, great meals conceived as theatrical spectacles. Also notable were the great variety of techniques, cooking vessels and utensils.
The four great Chronicles were written in the late 13th and 14th centuries and form the finest histographical collection from medieval Europe. Their authors, Jaume I, Bernat Desclot, Ramon Muntaner and Pere el Cerimoniós, aimed to leave a record of facts which they intended would be of educational value. The works of Jaume I and Pere el Cerimoniós are considered to be the only autobiographies of medieval monarchs.
In the first of the Chronicles, the Llibre dels feits, King Jaume I tells of the facts of his life, leaving out those that might have harmed the image he wanted to convey of a heroic and courtly monarch.
In the Llibre del rei En Pere, Bernat Desclot, there is no direct evidence of what he relates. Although it is noted for its careful documentation, its story offers a clearly interpretative vision of Pere el Gran.
Although there is direct evidence many of the facts told in the Llibre de Ramon Muntaner, the author manipulates history. He also doesn’t hide his enthusiasm for monarchs, whom he considers to be supernatural beings protected by divine grace.
The fourth of the Chronicles, the Llibre del Rei Pere III, is noted for its literary quality. However, it has always been the least appreciated because of its distance from the epic and chivalrous spirit and presents a King obsessed with imitating and surpassing his predecessors.
The codices of the four major Chronicles are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
Montserrat is a symbol for Catalonia and a point of pilgrimage for believers. The main attraction is the Mare de Déu (the mother of God), the patron saint of Catalonia. This Romanesque Virgin is popularly known as La Moreneta, due to the colour of the face and hands, darkened by the smoke of lighted candles.
The monastery was founded in 1025 on the orders of the Abbot Oliba, on top of a small chapel that Guifré el Pilós had donated to the Monastery of Ripoll.
The visit to Montserrat starts at the 16th-century basilica with Romanesque remains and a Gothic structure. Starting from here, the Plaça de Santa Maria, the epicentre, you can go over the whole complex, thanks to the great 19th-century renovation led by Josep Puig i Cadafalch.
Unmissable is the Museum of Montserrat. Its collection began with the materials of the biblical East brought back from his travels by Father Buenaventura Ubach. Since then, the collection has expanded with outstanding works from painters such as Caravaggio, Rusiñol, Casas, Nonell, Picasso, Monet, Sisley, Degas, Pissarro and Dali.
The museum being here is no coincidence. From the 17th century, Montserrat has been a cultural centre of the highest order as demonstrated by the exceptional library with more than 250,000 volumes from the monastery. Notable among the suggested activities is as visit to the Escolania, which is one of the oldest boys' choir schools in Europe, documented since the 14th century.
Near the Abbey, the neighbouring Monestir de Santa Cecília, is still preserved, which currently functions as the Sean Scully Art Space. Notable as well is the Romanesque church, also renovated in the 1930s by Puig i Cadafalch. Few know that this monastery was Abat Oliba’s first choice to extend his domains to Montserrat, but met with refusal of the community.
The Seu Vella is formed by a set of buildings strategically located on Turó de Lleida(Lleida Hill), which dominates the city and the surrounding plain. It is one of the most important cathedrals of Catalonia, especially noted for its sculptural work and for the cloister, one of the largest and most spectacular in Europe.
As is usual in these types of works, the Seu Vella was built and extended over the centuries, combining different architectural styles. The first Christian Cathedral began to be built in 1193 with the aim of catering for the growing population of the city. Of the Romanesque construction, the portals currently stand out.
At the end of the 13th century elements of new Gothic style were introduced. During this period the most important works of the church were completed and the chapels, the cloister, the bell-tower and the Portal of the Apostles, were built, which carried on during the 14th and 15th centuries.
The cloister is right in front of the main façade of the Church; an unusual position in Christian constructions, which recalls the entrance courtyards of Arabic mosques. The richly ornamented capitals deserve special attention, as do the splendid views over the city of Lleida which can be had from there.
During the transformation of the Cathedral of Barcelona in the 14th century, the parishes in the district of Ribera decided to erect a new church that would become one of the major benchmarks of Catalan Gothic.
Alfonso V of Aragon, ‘the benign’, laid the first stone of the temple in March 1329 to crown the conquest of Sardinia and the expansion of the Catalan dominion of the Mediterranean. The Cathedral of the Sea was built in record time: only 54 years. The whole district of Ribera participated with money and by taking, one-by-one, the stones from La Foixarda, the quarry of Montjuïc.
Observed from the outside, Santa Maria del Mar is compact, smooth, without large openings or ornaments. On the other hand, the arrangement is far from the typical configuration of the time, making room for a single open space. And the naves are built in such a way that they seem to be of a single piece.
One must pay special attention to the light. Its structure of a compact block makes it enter precisely on all four sides of the Church, without creating shadows and plays of light typical of Gothic churches. The rose window in the flamboyant style is especially remarkable.
The beauty of Santa Maria del Mar is rational and abstract and has come to captivate great architects such as Le Corbusier.
When she was just a little over 30 years old, the Queen Elisenda de Montcada withdrew from the world, remaining a widow. And she did it in the Monastery of Pedralbes, which she had founded in 1326 in the mountains of Sant Pere Màrtir (Barcelona). She lived there 37 years, with only the claretian nuns and the Gothic architecture for company.
The Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes was built in just 13 months and is noted for its great architectural homogeneity in the Gothic style. The white stones (petras albas), used to build the complex, gave their name to the area: Pedralbes.
Among the jewels of the monastery there is the small chapel of Sant Miquel, which is noted for the fresco and oil paintings (14th century), an exceptional testimony of the Catalan Gothic painting; the Gothic stained-glass windows of the interior of the church (considered the most important in Catalonia both for their antiquity and their good state of preservation) and the cloister. This is one of the largest and most impressive in the world.
Also noteworthy is the tomb of Queen Elisenda. Located between the Church and the cloister, it is a bi-frontal tomb representing her two sides: from the Church she is seen dressed and crowned as a Queen and, from the cloister, she appears as a widow and nun, with the simple Franciscan habit.
