Logbook · 2 places

What to see and do in Vega de Espinareda

What to see and do in Vega de Espinareda (El Bierzo, León): 2 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments

How far each place is from the centre of Vega de Espinareda

Monastery of San Andrés de Espinareda 50 m

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Spain › Castile and León › León › El Bierzo › Vega de Espinareda

What to see and do in Vega de Espinareda

Vega de Espinareda
Village
Vega de Espinareda is a Leonese town of about 2,000 inhabitants, crossed by the río Cúa and situated right in the comarca of El Bierzo, within the Ancares Leoneses biosphere reserve, declared in 2006; it is one of the bilingual municipalities in the transition area between Leonese and Galician. Its surroundings preserve holly woods, thousand-year-old chestnut trees, oak groves and centuries-old beech forests. The earliest human traces date back to the schematic cave paintings of Peña Piñera, at Sésamo, and there is also an Astur castro and a Roman bridge from the 1st-2nd centuries. Its monastery of San Andrés was founded in 923 by monks who came from the monastery of Ageo, in Zamora, and it prospered thanks to the fertility of the lands of the Cúa and the privileges of the Leonese monarchy.
Monastery of San Andrés de Espinareda
Monument
An abbey whose first written reference dates from the year 923 and which came to hold lordship over the town; it was founded by monks from the monastery of Ageo, in Zamora, following San Genadio, and prospered thanks to the fertility of the lands along the Cúa river and the favour of the kings of León. A fire devastated it in 1283, and an 18th-century renovation, begun in 1778 according to the inscription on the façade, gave it its present neoclassical look. The 1836 Desamortización stripped the monastery of all its land except a small orchard and the nearby oak wood, which led to its ruin and abandonment; it has been a monument since 24 July 1982.