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 musicians Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives, founders of the Catalan Choral Society in 1891, commissioned Lluis Domenech i Montaner to construct a building as the headquarters of the organisation. However, they didn't want just any building, rather a unique building that would reflect the sentiment of the Catalan bourgeoisie of the late nineteenth century. On 23rd April, 1905, construction was started and the Barcelona high-society did not miss its opening on 9th February, 1908.
A particularly outstanding feature of the façade is the sculptural cluster representing Catalan popular music. Once inside, the visitor encounters main foyer, a baroque area full of colour, before they are presented with the real jewel of the building: the concert hall. Domenech i Montaner used a steel structure that supports the weight of construction in order to obtain a large, open and clean space. In addition, the ceiling is adorned with a large skylight in the shape of an inverted dome that represents a sun surrounded by female faces. The stage is the other big attraction of the hall, flanked by the most important sculptures of the building.
Domenech i Montaner designed a palace where architecture is combined with sculpture, joinery, marquetry, glasswork, mosaic and ceramics. This is what we know as a true work of art.
Who says that a hospital has to be white and devoid of all decoration? Thanks to the legacy of the banker Pau Gil, in 1902 the modernist architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, planned a hospital full of beauty, rich in ornamentation, colour and vegetation.
It is a monumental complex consisting of 27 red brick pavilions located on the border between the districts of Eixample and Guinardó. It is a true hospital city where, surrounded by gardens, medical and general treatments are provided, and where apartments and a church are located. Everything is connected via a 2 km underground passage systemthat allows patients to move about without going outside.
The project by Domènech i Montaner, that would be finished by his son in 1930, is a completely innovative architectural and urban conceptin terms of the typical 20th century hospital. The hospital separated services to avoid contagion and favoured natural light and open spaces to freshen the air and provide a more pleasing environment for the patients .
After more than 80 years of healthcare activity, the hospital was moved to new buildings in 2009. Once vacated and renovated, Domènech i Montaner's modernist pavilions became the home of other institutions.
The Basílica Expiatòria de la Sagrada Família (Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia) is one of the most remarkable examples of Catalan ‘modernisme’ (Art Nouveau) and has become a symbol of Barcelona. Undoubtedly it is the unfinished monument that attracts most visitors in the world. Moreover, Antoni Gaudí poured all his efforts and knowledge into the project right up until his death, although he only saw completion of the crypt, the apse and the façade of the Nativity with one of the bell towers. Together, these areas were declared World Heritage Site in 2005.
Construction of the Sagrada Familia began in 1882 with the crypt located under the apse, according to a preliminary neo-Gothic design. When the commission was handed over to Gaudí, he completely changed the design and adapted the project to his naturalist ideals. One of the treasures of the crypt is the Roman-style mosaics on the floor. Another feature that cannot be missed is the framed altarpiece dedicated to the Holy Family by the sculptor Josep Llimona. And it is precisely in this intimate and mystic setting that Antoni Gaudí is buried, specifically in the chapel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Once the crypt and apse were finished, Gaudí started on a more ambitious and complex project based on detailed symbolism and great formal construction innovations based on the parabolic arch. This led to the Nativity façade. According to Gaudí: "If instead of creating this decorated, ornate and bombastic façade, I had begun with the Passion, hard, bare and bone-like; people would have expressed disapproval". Thus he turned the façade into a detailed stone book relating the episodes of Jesus’s childhood.
After Gaudí’s death, the building went through decades of slow evolution. With the revival of interest in the work of Gaudí, the number of visitors has greatly increased in recent years and construction work on the temple has advanced quickly, following the models and notes left by the master. The interior of the nave of the church is a new attraction and it is hoped that in 2026 the building of Gaudí’s dreams will be completed.
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.
Located in the heart of the Gothic quarter in Barcelona, the Cathedral building was constructed over a period of 150 years, between the 13th and 15th centuries. The place chosen was the same on which a Romanesque cathedral and, before that, an early paleochristian temple had previously existed. The church is dedicated to the Santa Creu and Santa Eulàlia, the patron saint of the city.
The Cathedral of Barcelona is a beautiful example of Catalan Gothicstyle, far removed from the verticality of the French style. A curiosity of this building is that it has the dome at the foot of the nave, almost in touching distance of the main façade. This was so that the Gallery Royal would be lit equally with the altar.
This dome and façade date from the late 19th century and early 20th century. The façade was built on the occasion of the Universal Exposition of 1888 in the neo-Gothic style.
It is one of the most significant elements of the church along with theGothic cloister (don’t miss the ‘dancing egg' on the day of Corpus Christi, when an empty egg is made to dance on the jet of water in the fountain) and the crypt of Santa Eulalia with the richly sculpted alabaster sarcophagus.
Equally remarkable is the collection of altarpieces, which occupy the inner chapels, among which there is the Altarpiece of the Transfiguration, by Bernat Martorell.
Then there is the choir which is one of the most remarkable sculptural ensembles of the International Gothic style in Catalonia. Begun in the 14th century, in the 16th century it was completed with screens depicting scenes from the Old Testament and the Passion and the heraldic paintings of the choir stall.
At the foot of the Cathedral of Girona, a small dome peeks above a stone building. It is the lantern of the city’s Arab baths which identifies the silhouette of this little jewel.
The building is captivating for the simplicity of its forms and, once inside, to the beauty of the play between light and darkness. The building is in the Romanesque style but follows the model of Roman baths, the Arab baths and the Jewish mikvahs from a tradition that was restored during the 11th century, with the development of the urban areas and the need to improve hygiene.
The building is divided into several rooms that allow one to move from the areas with the coldest water to those with the hottest. Visitors enter through a small vestibule that leads up to the apodyterium (the 'undressing room’);it is without doubt the most emblematic space in the baths, with a central pool of 8 sides and 8 columns crowned with beautiful decorated capitals.
Until the 14th century, the building maintained its activity as public baths. In the 20th century, the Arab baths were restored to return them to their original appearance.
In the shadow of the Lleida Pyrenees, the Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Seu d'Urgell is the only Romanesque cathedral that has survived until today and is the best example of the power of the Bishopric of Urgell. Its dimensions and the Italianised style of construction also provide a unique testimony to Romanesque Catalonia.
The current building of the Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Seu d'Urgell is the fourth to be built on the same site. It is a reconstruction commissioned by the Bishop Ot in 1090 and was finished at the end of the 12th century. Even so, for three centuries it was hidden beneath layers of plaster that had been applied during the Baroque period and it was Josep Puig i Cadafalch who, from 1918, began the restoration of its original appearance.
The result is a stone construction devoid of ornamentation. A polychrome carving of the Mare de Déu d’Urgell (Virgin Mary of Urgell), patron Saint of the city, breaks up the austerity of the interior and focuses the viewer’s gaze. It is a wooden figure from the 13th century and is hidden inside a small apsidal. Above, a 15th-century rose window illuminates the altar.
The majestic cloister has more than 50 capitals decorated with vegetative elements, men and common beasts.
Apart from the architecture, the Cathedral of Seu d’Urgell is noted for keeping one of the best copies of the famous Beatus of Liébana and a copy of the Beatus of Urgell, exhibited at the Diocesan Museum.
