Spain and Portugal for Visitors

As both mountain and monastery, Montserrat is close to the soul of Catalonia. Montserrat, "the jagged mountain", is like nothing you have seen before, great, lofty, round, pink turrets of rock, soaring like steeples, and it is said that they inspired Gaudi's spindly bell towers for the unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica. And the monastery, Catalonia's most hallowed place of worship, holds the curious Virgin of Montserrat, La Moreneta or dark girl, a Black Madonna with a black baby Jesus on her lap.

Montserrat the mountain is a nature reserve, the Parc Natural de Montserrat. Its curious morphology, flora and fauna, make it beloved of walkers and climbers of all levels, being scaleable in hundreds of different ways, beginning with the funicular railway up from the monastery and going up to what Climb Catalunya calls "sports routes... of all levels, from F5 to F8c+." Unfortunately, this popularity has its down side, and environmentalists say it is suffering from the pollution brought by and sheer weight of the thousands of excursionists who visit it every weekend.

Montserrat the Benedictine monastery and abbey, also called the Sanctuary, is a complex of buildings, almost a town, arranged on a kind of ledge in the mountain and dominated by it. The basilica and the Mare Deu shrine, the sanctuary proper, are the most important structures. Montserrat's raison d'être is an image of the Virgin Mary, miraculously discovered (of course) in a cave in the ninth century, though the one now worshipped is thought to be a copy from the twelfth or thirteenth century.

The monastery was largely destroyed by Napoleonic troops between 1811 and 1812, and to make matters worse, the Disentailment of the Spanish Church left it stripped of its properties. But it found a new role as Catalan nationalism gained ground throughout the nineteenth century, and when the Virgin of Montserrat was proclaimed patron saint of Catalonia (jointly with Saint George) in 1881, it became the most-loved Catalan icon. It survived the Spanish Civil War, and was even more influential afterwards.

As well as the basilica and sanctuary, reasons to visit Montserrat Monastery include hearing the choir (check the website of the Montserrat Reservation Centre under "Montserrat Links" for details) and visiting the Museum of Montserrat, which has an awesome art collection, including works by Berruguete, El Greco, Caravaggio, Fortuny, Rusiñol, Casas, Picasso, Nonell, Mir, Dalí, Monet, Sisley, Degas, Pissarro, Chagall, Braque, Le Corbusier, Tàpies and others. And, naturally the mountain, Montserrat.

Click here for Montserrat opening hours, entrance prices, and how to get there.