Sant Pere de Rodes

Interesting facts

The Rodes Bible, one of the great illuminated manuscripts of Romanesque Catalonia, was carried off by the Duke of Noailles in 1693 and is now in Paris.

Written in the first quarter of the 11th century, the Rodes Bible originally had 566 folios and was split into four volumes in the 18th century.

Tradition traces the abbey's pilgrimage jubilees to a bull of Pope Urban II, though historians now question that document's authenticity.

Jubilees in honour of the Holy Cross drew pilgrims to the abbey until its decline in the 17th century, and the church's ambulatory was suited to such crowds.

Some of the church's columns and pillars were taken from an earlier Roman building.

In 1215 the community numbered 25 monks, and from 1447 the abbey was governed by commendatory abbots rather than elected ones.

French troops plundered the abbey in 1675 and 1693, and in 1731 smugglers raided it and killed several of its servants.

After leaving the mountain in 1798, the last monks lived at Vila-sacra and from 1809 in Figueres, where the community eventually dissolved.

Restoration began in 1935, resumed in 1973 and was largely completed in 1999.

Nearby lie the ruins of Santa Creu de Rodes, a medieval village that grew up near the abbey, with its pre-Romanesque church of Santa Helena.

Why it is worth it

High on the slope of Verdera mountain, above the bays of El Port de la Selva and Llançà, the great Romanesque abbey of Sant Pere de Rodes looks out over the whole northern coast of Cap de Creus. Its church, cloister, towers and monastic ranges are laid out on terraces that follow the fall of the mountainside, and above them on the summit stand the ruins of the castle of Sant Salvador de Verdera, which once guarded the community.

Legend places the origin of the monastery in the early 7th century: monks fleeing invaders are said to have hidden relics of Saint Peter and other saints here, and Pope Boniface IV is said to have ordered a monastery to be built on the spot once the danger had passed. The documents begin in 878, when the place appears as a modest cell dependent on the monastery of Banyoles. In the 10th century the magnate Tassi and his son Hildesind, its first abbot, turned it into an independent Benedictine abbey in 945, answerable only to the Holy See. Backed by the counts of Empúries and enriched by donations, it became one of the most powerful feudal and pilgrimage centres in Catalonia, with lands spread across Peralada, Empúries, Roussillon, Besalú and Girona. Decline set in from the 14th century with plague, piracy and banditry, and the monks finally left at the end of the 18th century.

The church, consecrated in 1022, is the heart of the complex and one of the most singular buildings of medieval Catalonia. It has three naves, a transept and three apses; the central nave is barrel-vaulted, and the pillars carry two superimposed orders of columns with large capitals, the lower ones Corinthian with acanthus leaves, the upper ones geometric and vegetal. The main apse rises above a crypt and is wrapped in a double ambulatory on two levels, and horseshoe arches recall the pre-Romanesque tradition. In the second half of the 12th century the church received a monumental portal carved by the Master of Cabestany; it survives only in fragments, some of them now in the Frederic Marès Museum in Barcelona. Beside the church rise a square bell tower in the Lombard style, with blind arcading and paired windows, and a stout defensive tower. The upper cloister once had 44 columns with carved capitals.

Getting there

Sant Pere de Rodes stands within the municipality of El Port de la Selva in the Alt Empordà, north-eastern Catalonia, reached by a mountain road from the coast. The town of Roses lies about 7 km away in a straight line. The nearest airports are Perpignan-Rivesaltes (PGF) in France, about 52 km to the north, and Girona-Costa Brava (GRO), about 57 km to the south-west.

Sant Pere de Rodes

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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