Logbook · 11 places

Monastery of Santa María de Veruela

Vera de Moncayo, Tarazona y el Moncayo, Zaragoza

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 3 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 3 Historical milestones

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Monastery of Santa María de Veruela

Monument · Vera de Moncayo, Tarazona y el Moncayo, Zaragoza

The Real Monasterio de Santa María de Veruela is a 12th-century Cistercian abbey at the foot of the Moncayo, near Vera de Moncayo, and one of the great monastic complexes of Aragon. Pedro de Atarés donated the valleys of Veruela and Maderuela to French monks from Escaladieu to found a monastery here dedicated to the Virgin Mary; the Cistercian order authorised the foundation in 1146, the oldest Cistercian monastery in Aragon, and the monks moved in around 1171, although work on the church went on for some 250 years. In the 17th century a Baroque cloister with individual cells was added. The disentailment forced the monks to abandon it in 1835; among its most celebrated guests was the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who wrote a good part of Desde mi celda there.

Photo: Josep Renalias (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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