Poblet Monastery
Monasterio de Poblet
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The name Poblet comes from the Latin populetum, a grove of poplars, recalling the woods that still surround the abbey.
- The land was given around 1150 by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, to the French abbey of Fontfroide near Narbonne.
- The stone altarpiece by Damià Forment cost so much that the monks rose against their abbot and sentenced him to life confinement for squandering funds.
- The Golden Gate takes its name from bronze plates that Philip II had gilded when he spent Holy Week at Poblet in 1564.
- Ferdinand and Isabella visited in 1493 with their children, including three daughters who became queens of Castile, Portugal and England.
- Peter IV ringed the royal pantheon with a fortified wall about 11 metres high and two metres thick, defended by twelve towers.
- Abbot Conill's coat of arms on the Saint George chapel bears a carved rabbit, a pun on his name, which means rabbit in Catalan.
- Its abbots and monks were excused from swearing oaths in court, on the assumption that their word was worth more than an oath.
- Besides Aragonese kings, the abbey holds the tomb of Philip Wharton, an English duke and Jacobite exile who died in 1731.
- After the tombs were desecrated in the 1830s, the royal remains were reburied mixed together, so individual kings can no longer be told apart.
Why it is worth it
Poblet is a Cistercian abbey on the edge of the Prades Mountains in inland Catalonia, founded in 1151 by monks from France, and for centuries it was the burial place of the kings of the Crown of Aragon. It is the largest of three sister houses, together with Santes Creus and Vallbona de les Monges, that are known as the Cistercian triangle, and it was inscribed by UNESCO in 1991. The monastic buildings cover about 12,000 square metres, and at its height the community had more than 300 monks and ran a network of farms worked by lay brothers.
The heart of the visit is the royal pantheon in the church. Beginning with James I, the kings of Aragon chose Poblet for their tombs, and Peter IV made burial here part of the coronation oath; only Ferdinand II, who united Aragon with Castile, broke it and lies in Granada. The most important sarcophagi carry alabaster effigies, with lions at the kings' feet and dogs at the queens'. They were restored by the Catalan sculptor Frederic Marès in 1948. The altarpiece of 1527 is the work of the sculptor Damià Forment.
The pantheon's calm hides a violent history. After the confiscation of church property in 1835 the monks were expelled, the monastery was plundered, parts were burned and the royal tombs were desecrated; for a century the buildings decayed and roofs fell in. Italian Cistercians refounded the house in 1940 and rebuilt it, deliberately leaving one building near the church entrance as a ruin to show what the monastery had become. A community of about thirty monks lives here today.
Beyond the church, the visit leads through the monastic quarters, including a cloister with a fountain house where the monks washed. The main architect of the medieval works was Arnau Bargués, and the style throughout is Catalan Gothic. Because Poblet is a living monastery, some areas are closed to visitors, and a guesthouse designed by Mariano Bayón opened in 2010.
Getting there
The abbey stands in the municipality of Vimbodí i Poblet, in the Conca de Barberà. The nearest larger town is Valls, about 18 km away, and the nearest airport is Reus Airport (REU), about 27 km away. By rail, the closest station is L'Espluga de Francolí, roughly 4 km from the abbey: a few buses a day make the ten-minute trip, or you can walk the path between the town and the monastery in about 40 minutes.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Poblet Abbey, otherwise the Royal Abbey of Santa Maria de Poblet, is a Cistercian monastery, founded in 1151, located at the foot of the Prades Mountains, in the comarca of Conca de Barberà, in Catalonia (Spain). It was founded by Cistercian monks from France. The main architect was Arnau Bargués.
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