Monasteries in Spain
Santa María da Armenteira Monastery
Santa María da Armenteira Monastery belongs to the Cistercian order and was founded by the knight Ero de Armenteira in 1168. It has a square cloister, a kitchen, and a tower, all in the 18th-century Baroque style. The monastery was abandoned after the sale of church lands in 1835. The church has a floor plan in the shape of a Latin cross, three naves and three semicircular apses. The central nave is crowned with a pointe ...
Founded: 1168 |
Location:
Meis, Spain
San Juan de Ortega Monastery
San Juan de Ortega Monastery was probably built by Saint John of Ortega himself, with the help of his friend and fellow saint, Domingo de la Calzada, around 1142 as a help point to the pilgrims who walked to Santiago de Compostela along the Way of Saint James. The monastery was originally staffed by a community of Augustinian canons. The monastery belonged to the Order of Los Jerónimos from 1432 until the 1835, when the ...
Founded: 1142 |
Location:
Barrios de Colina, Spain
Monastery of Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil
The Benedictine monastery of Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil has its origin in the 10th century. It was first an independent monastery and after the improvements in the 16th century, it remains today as a priory dependent on the monastery of San Esteban de Ribas de Sil. At this time the cloister was improved and the paintings in the church were made. It was one of the most important monasteries of the Ribeira Sacra during ...
Founded: 10th century AD |
Location:
Parada de Sil, Spain
Monastery of El Paular
The Monasterio de Santa María de El Paular is a former Carthusian monastery. Construction is believed to have begun in 1390 by orders of Henry II of Castile, and construction proceeded for fifty years under his son, John I of Castile. It was sited where an old chapel stood. Supposedly he was spurred to this project due to his plundering of a chartreuse during a campaign in France. This was the first chartreuse i ...
Founded: 1390 |
Location:
Rascafría, Spain
Carracedo Monastery
The Monastery of Saint Mary of Carracedo is an inactive abbey and palace complex, now in semi-restored state near the town of Carracedelo. Founded in the tenth century by the Benedictine order, it lies near the Way of Santiago in Northern Spain. The first cenobitic community, the Monastery of San Salvador, was founded here around the year 990 by Bermudo II, King of the Kingdom of León and the Kingdom of Galic ...
Founded: c. 990 AD |
Location:
Carracedelo, Spain
Monastery of San Pedro de Villanueva
The Monastery of San Pedro de Villanueva is a Romanesque monastery previously owned by the order of Benedictines. A church here supposedly was founded by Alfonso I the Catholic, son in law of Pelagius of Asturias. The remaining structures now date from later periods. In the 12th century, the monastery was built adjacent to the church. The buildings underwent substantial rebuilding after the 17th century. In 1835, the ...
Founded: 12th century |
Location:
Villanueva, Spain
Santa Paula Convent
Seville has many enclosed religious complexes, but few are accessible. This is one of them, a convent set up in 1475 and still home to 40 nuns. The public is welcome to enter through two different doors in the Calle Santa Paula. Knock on the brown one, marked number 11 to look at the convent museum. Steps lead to two galleries, crammed with religious paintings and artifacts. The windows of the second look onto the nuns&qu ...
Founded: 1475 |
Location:
Seville, Spain
Monastery of San Antón
There were formerly a palace and garden of King Pedro I of Castile as well as the ruins of the old monastery of San Antón. It was dedicated to taking care of the sick people on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. At present, only the arch remains standing.
Founded: 1146 |
Location:
Castrojeriz, Spain
Monastery of Santa María la Real
From the 12th century the Monastery of Santa María la Real was the home of a Premonstratensian community. The architecture is in a transitional style between Romanesque and Gothic. The monastery was closed in the 19th century as a result of the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal. The buildings fell into ruin and in 1871 various capitals (dated circa 1200) were removed to the National Archaeological Museum ...
Founded: 1169 |
Location:
Aguilar de Campoo, Spain
Santo Toribio de Liébana
The Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana is a Roman Catholic monastery located in the Cantabrian Mountains and is one of the five places in Christianity that, together with Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela and Caravaca de la Cruz, has the privilege of issuing perpetual indulgences. Its origins are obscure, but it was during the reign of Alfonso I of Asturias, who was repopulating the area around Liébana during ...
Founded: 8th century AD |
Location:
Potes, Spain
Saint Mary of Parral Monastery
Monastery of Saint Mary of Parral is a Roman Catholic monastery of the enclosed monks of the Order of Saint Jerome just outside the walls of Segovia. It was founded by King Henry IV of Castile, who acquired the lands before he became king in 1454. Despite a generally irreligious life, Henry IV maintained connections with the Hieronymites and was buried in the sister-house of Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe. In ...
Founded: 1454 |
Location:
Segovia, Spain
San Pablo Monastery
In 1324, Infante Don Juan Manuel erected the contemporary Gothic-Mudejar convent, where he was subsequently buried, in what was once a fortress built by Alfonso X, the Wise. This emblematic monument was declared a Heritage of Cultural Interest in 1931 and can currently be visited on a free or guided tour. This Heritage of Cultural Interest boasts a façade with exuberant brick arches, made in the Gothic-Mudejar style, wh ...
Founded: 1324 |
Location:
Peñafiel, Spain
Monastery of Santa María de Huerta
Monastery of Santa María de Huerta foundation was made by the king Alfonso VII of León and Castile, in fulfilment of a promise he made in the siege of Coria. For this project, the king brought in 1142, from the abbey of Berdoues in Gascony (France), a community of Cistercian monks, with their abbot Rodulfo. The monastery ransfer to the lands near the Jalón river in 1162. Alfonso VII of León and Castile l ...
Founded: 1179 |
Location:
Santa María de Huerta, Spain
Monastery of San Salvador de Oña
San Salvador de Oña monastery was founded by Sancho García, the Count of Castile, for his daughter Tigridia, as a double monastery in 1011. The nuns came from the Monastery of San Juan in Cillaperlata, while the monks were from the Monastery of San Salvador in Loberuela. In October 1033, King Sancho III of Navarre gave the monastery to the Abbey of Cluny, by which it became a part of the largest monastic organizatio ...
Founded: 1011 |
Location:
Oña, Spain
San Pedro de Cardeña Monastery
San Pedro de Cardeña Monastery was founded before 902. The prosperity of the monastery in the early medieval period is reflected in the quality of its scriptorium, in which the monk Endura performed extraordinary works. The Blessed of San Pedro de Cardeña was made between 1175 and 1180, has 290 pages and 51 miniatures. The convent church dates from the 16th century; annexed is the Capilla del Cid, where the hero and ...
Founded: c. 902 AD |
Location:
San Pedro de Cardeña, Spain
Convento de San José
The Convento de San José is a monastery of Discalced Carmelite nuns in Ávila. It is situated not far from the center of the city but outside the medieval walls. Saint Teresa of Jesus was the driving force behind the foundation of the monastery, which was built from 1562 onwards. The statue in the facade was commissioned by King Philip III of Spain via artist Giraldo de Merlo. In 25 August 1963, Pope Paul VI ...
Founded: 1562 |
Location:
Ávila, Spain
Santa Clara Monastery
Santa Clara Monastery was founded by Don Sancho Sanchez de Velasco and his wife Doña Sancha García in 1313. Throughout the centuries almost all members of the Velasco family were buried there. The Gothic church has a single nave and is divided into side chapels. The High Altar has three altarpieces bathed in gold in the Rococo style. The museum shows the works of art and relics of the monastery, most donated by the fa ...
Founded: 1313 |
Location:
Medina de Pomar, Spain
Monastery of Santa María de Melón
The old Cistercian monastery of Melón contains in its church one of the largest and most imposing sanctuaries in Galician monastic architecture. It was founded by monks from Clairvaux Abbey in France, in 1142. It was once very powerful, as attested by the remaining architecture. Various rooms in the monastery, the galleries in the cloister and the two later chapels are currently undergoing restoration, as well as the en ...
Founded: 1142 |
Location:
Melón, Spain
Rioseco Abbey
Rioseco is a former Cistercian abbey situated in the Valle de Manzanedo, near the River Ebro. In 1148 the Cistercian Valbuena Abbey, of the filiation of Morimond, founded a daughter house in a small former hermitage in Quintanajuar, in the Páramo de Masa. In 1171 this new community received as a gift from the heirs of the nobleman Martino Martini de Uizozes the ancient monastery of Rioseco, the previous history ...
Founded: c. 1204 |
Location:
Valle de Manzanedo, Spain
Valbuena Abbey
Valbuena Abbey was founded in 1143 by Estefanía, daughter of Count Ermengol V of Urgell, and settled from Berdoues Abbey in France, of the filiation of Morimond. Valbuena received a number of privileges shortly after its foundation, and flourished to the point where it was able to settle three daughter houses of its own. In the 14th century a decline set in. Valbuena remained a daughter house of Berdoues until 1430, w ...
Founded: 1143 |
Location:
Valbuena de Duero, Spain