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Monastery of Santa María de Rioseco

Valle de Manzanedo, Las Merindades, Burgos

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature

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Monastery of Santa María de Rioseco

Monument · Valle de Manzanedo, Las Merindades, Burgos

The Monastery of Santa María de Rioseco stands on the banks of the Ebro, in the Valle de Manzanedo, next to the Hoces del Alto Ebro y Rudrón nature park, 10 kilometres from Villarcayo. A Cistercian monastery founded at Quintanajuar and moved several times before settling at Rioseco in 1236, it came to hold lordship over a large part of northern Burgos, and in its best days housed around a hundred people, monks, lay brothers and servants, with a guesthouse and hospital for pilgrims and the poor. Now abandoned, it is being restored by volunteers thanks to the Salvemos Rioseco collective, which secured its removal from the Red List of endangered heritage in 2018; in 2019 it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). Beside it survives the hermitage of Argés, older than the monastery itself.

Photo: Voluntarios de Rioseco (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What to see and do in Valle de Manzanedo