Miravet Castle
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Miravet Castle

Introduction

Miravet Castle, an imposing fortress surrounded by a 25 metre high wall that seems to spring from the rocks, stands on a hill dominating the Ebro river and the lands around it.

This strategic location has drawn settlements since prehistory and it has played a leading role in many conflicts.

Today we can still see part of the structures of an Andalusian fortress on top of which the Templar castle was raised immediately after the conquest of these lands by Ramon Berenguer IV. The castle was a gift to the Order of the Temple, who made it the headquarters of the Templar province of Catalonia and Aragón for what would be the period of the zenith of the power and splendour of the history of Miravet. The province became the seat of the provincial master of the Order and so was acknowledged as the most influential commandery on Catalan territory.

Although the castle was rebuilt later to adapt to the defensive requirements that arose with the coming of artillery, the appearance and the structures that have lasted down to our time are essentially the work of the Templars. And so Miravet has become one of the finest examples of Catalan military architecture of the 12th-13th centuries.

A visit to this Templar building will take us inside the monastic life of a military order governed by the strict discipline of the Cistercian Rule with a rigid hierarchy structuring an internal organisation that was ideal for a successful economic and religious administration. That also meant that it was an eye witness to the process of the suppression and extinction of the Order of the Temple.



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